My Death Battle Attempts
by LittleZbot
Summary: In which I take two fictional characters and pit them against each other in a duel to the death. Inspired by DAM's Death Battle fanfic. Rules in the first chapter. NEXT BATTLE: Alphonse (Fullmetal Alchemist) vs. Nightmare (Soulcaliber)
1. Introduction & Rules

Hey, LittleZbot here, and allow me to introduce something you will probably either love or hate or just not care about. This is a Death Battle fanfiction. Based off the popular Online Show, I pit two fictional characters in a battle to the death and explain why I think who won would win. If this sounds like a terrible idea to you, that's because it probably is, and you might want to leave and never read anything I write again in this fanfiction. I mean, you're free to go ahead and read it, but I can't guarantee its quality.

Let me establish something: This is just for fun. I literally look all this stuff up and write it all down because I enjoy doing so. The only reason this is even on here is because some people have informed me that others could enjoy reading it. This fanfiction is, of course, heavily inspired by the official Death Battle series, but also by my good friend DeadAliveManiac's Death Battle fanfiction as well. If you do like this stuff, you should check him out; he and his friends put way more time and effort into these than I do, and he has more than sixty battles available for your enjoyment.

 **There's a lot of text below here, but you don't have to read it if you don't want to. It's just giving out basic Death Battle rules, examples of those rules, and asking you to play nice. If you want, go right ahead to the first battle. Or just read the stuff in bold.**

Let me clarify a couple of things:

The Three Rules of Death Battle:

 **\- No direct outside help.**

Objects and weapons that are typically available to the character will be allowed, but no random involvement from other people that have no business being in the fight. If I pit Iron Man vs., I don't know, Mr. Krabbs, I can't say Iron Man would win because he would call in the Hulk who would kill Mr. Krabbs. That's not fair, and that's not the question we're asking. But I could certainly allow Iron Man use of all of his suits, as he generally has full access to them.

 **-No non-cannon knowledge of the other character.**

If I put Spiderman vs. Mr. Krabbs, I can't say Mr. Krabbs will win because of Spiderman's pesticide weakness. If both characters have never met, they will not start off knowing anything about the other fighter. Of course, stuff like Mind Reading, 4th Wall Breaking, and even incredible deduction skills can easily override this.

 **\- Personal restraints/rules against killing are ignored in interest of having the battles actually play out and/or end.**

If I do Dora vs. Superman, one of them will die in the end, even though neither would actually kill the other if they really met. However, all other characteristics will remain true to the character so they will be properly represented.

In addition, I'd like to add a couple of basic rules:

 **\- The terrain may be something familiar to both combatants, or, well, whatever, but must no be the deciding factor in the fight.**

If I pit a character who can manipulate lava against one who can manipulate trees, it wouldn't be fair for me to have the battle in a forest and nowhere else, for example.

 **\- Either the most popular version of a character or a composite character will be used for characters with more than one incarnation.**

So I could certainly compose a version of Kenny from South Park based on all the episodes of South Park he's in, despite his dying every episode or so clearly showing that each version is a new Kenny, but if I were to use the Flash in a battle, I'd use Barry Allen's Flash, even though Wally West's Flash is more powerful. It just depends on what makes sense. Don't worry, I'll clarify all this before each battle where it's a question.

 **\- I will determine a win based on who I believe would win more times if they both fought dozens, even hundreds of times.**

So, in a battle of Batman and a Larry the Cucumber, Larry might win 0.01% of the time because he tries to make Batman eat him, somehow succeeds, and ends up choking Batman. However, this is extraordinarily unlikely, so I would officially declare Batman the winner in a Death Battle since he just cuts Larry in half with a Knife/Batarang the other 99.99% of the time.

And finally, just for clarification:

 **\- The battle is just a fun extra. It does not, I repeat, does not, determine the winner. That is determined based on data long before I start the battle.**

\- **Uploads may very well be sporadic, as I'm doing this just for fun, not seriously. In addition, the "Next Time on Death Battle"s, may not be what actually gets posted next. They're more of a teaser for what I kinda want to do next, but I make no promises about anything.**

\- **If you think I'm wrong, it probably means I am. Go ahead and leave a rant or a review or whatever saying what you want to say. I promise I won't delete it.** Please do remember, however, that this whole thing is just for fun. I'm just one guy, writing a ripoff of a friend's story that was a ripoff of an internet show that was a ripoff of a History Channel show. I'm going to get things wrong. So please don't get upset if your favorite character dies or if you think I'm wrong about the winner. 

\- **If you are unfamiliar with the format of Death Battle, I recommend you either watch an episode on YouTube or read a chapter of DeadAliveManiac's Death Battle fic.**

Thank you, everyone for reading this.

Anyway, let's get into our first fight.


	2. The Meta vs Black Beetle

_Episode 1: The Meta (Red vs. Blue) vs. Black Beetle (Young Justice)_

Artificial Intelligence. According to Moore's Law, for every two years that pass, technology will double in power. It's inevitable; one day A.I. will control the world. But, in the meantime, they'll just control individuals. Like the Meta, the Reds and Blues' most dangerous enemy, and Black Beetle, the Reach's greatest weapon. I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to rip off other shows- I mean, to analyze their weapons, armor and skills to find out who might win a Death Battle.

Note that I am using the Dawur version of Black Beetle (known to most as the version from the Young Justice television show) rather than the Hector version (the version from the Blue Beetle comics). This is because, simply put, the Dawur version is much more well-known and has many more similarities to the Meta. Speaking of which, some of Black Beetle's past is based off what is implied in the Young Justice series (both Show & Comics) and may be shown wrong later. As this does not decrease from his power, it shouldn't have much of an impact. Also note that the Meta in this fight will be at his prime, which is during the events of Season 6. Therefore, he has all of his A.I. and armor equipment. Feats from both previous and future events will be taken into account, however.

With that being said, let's get into it.

 **The Meta:**

During The Great War between the Humans and the Covenant, the UNSC grew desperate. With no end to the conflict in sight, they began funding several different projects, each of which was focusing on finding the "golden ticket," the secret weapon to winning the war. Project Freelancer was one such project. Focusing on researching special operation units with armor enhancements and A.I. implants, it recruited and trained the galaxy's greatest soldiers, and high up on the leaderboard was Agent Maine.

Hailing from parts unknown, Agent Maine was a brute. He was unmatched in both strength and durability, and he had more than enough skill in the ways of combat to hold his own. He quickly became one of Project Freelancer's deadliest agents, destroying everything in his way and completing every objective. Still, despite his amoral and sociopath tendencies, he also became friends with several other agents, learning from them and gaining their support. Everything changed, however, during one fateful mission when Maine was shot nine times in the throat in an effort to save Agent Carolina's life. Though he was able to get up and continue fighting, Maine would never speak again.

Even though she was scheduled to receive one next, feeling responsible for his injury, Carolina decided to grant Maine her A.I. implant in order for him to be able to communicate with others and remain a dangerous foe on the battlefield. But, as it turns out, giving away an A.I. you were specifically chosen for isn't a great idea. See, even though Project Freelancer's entire purpose was to study A.I. in the field, they could only ever get their hands on a single one. Desperate to complete his program, the Director began torturing the A.I. until it would split off a portion of its personality to save itself from total deterioration. These fragments were harvested and given to Agents as A.I. units. Sigma, Maine's new A.I., was created when the original A.I., Alpha, shed its creativity and ambition, ensuring that Sigma was composed entirely of these two traits. Shortly after being implanted, Sigma became obsessed with the idea of "Metastability" - the state in which an A.I. can become human. Eventually, he found data that suggested it was possible if he could gather enough A.I. and fragments into one being. As a result, he began controlling and manipulating Maine, eventually removing his input completely and transforming him into the deadly weapon known as the Meta. The Meta immediately began hunting down other Freelancers, killing them and stealing their A.I. and equipment.

But even the strongest fighters can use some good weapons, and Meta has two he carries on him at all times. The first is his standard sidearm, the M6G Magnum Pistol. Though it may not look impressive, a single shot can tear through a stone pillar and cut through most kinds of armor. While the amount of shots it carries is supposed to be limited to 8, he's shot it more than twenty times before and it hasn't run out, which should be physically impossible, but nonetheless useful. But his favorite weapon is a personal prize from the very mission he lost his voice at: The Brute Shot. This Type-25 Grenade Launcher is a two-handed knife/grenade launcher that is used very effectively in combat, and has been the last thing many people saw. Similar to the Magnum, its ammo capacity should be limited to 16, but it…isn't. Which is good for The Meta, as a single grenade can obliterate an armored vehicle, and the blade can slice through solid steel like butter. Not only that, but it's incredibly durable. The Meta has used it to block multiple gunshots without so much as a scratch. It is widely hailed as one of the most dangerous weapons in the world - so it's only fitting that such a monster as the Meta would be the one to use it most.

But as good as his weapons are, they can hardly compare to his armor. The M374 Hephaestus Combat Suit is a powerful suit that can even tank sniper bullets and be hit by more than ten simultaneous trip mine explosions without so much as a scratch, and yet is still lightweight and non-restrictive. Its best feature, however, is its ability to be equipped with multiple armor enhancements. By killing several other Freelancers, the Meta was able to collect their armor enhancements and use them for himself. These enhancements include the Enhanced Motion Tracker, a device that allows him to see on all layers of the visible spectrum, including infrared, as well as being able to see through walls and buildings. The Bioscan allows him to scan all surrounding life and display their vitals and current condition. His Voice Manipulator lets him, well, manipulate voices, and his Adaptive Camouflage changes the color of his armor at will in order to blend into a crowd.

But none of these are anywhere near his best enhancements. His Active Camouflage turns him almost totally invisible, both on a visual and sensor range. The Overshield creates a personal energy shield that absorbs and redirects any and all impacts, essentially acting like an invincibility mode until it takes too much damage and breaks. Of course, it tanked a few missiles and several point-blank shotgun blasts without issue, so it would take quite a bit to break through. The Domed Energy shield is similar to the Overshield, but can be activated and deactivated upon command, engulfs a much larger space, and stays put as long as the Meta does. And while the Meta can't use his weapons while contained inside the shield, as no projectile or, well, anything else, can get in or out, it's impossible to break through, easily tanking anti-aircraft missiles and a nuclear explosion.

Then there's his Strength Boost enhancement, which boosts his already incredible strength to absurd levels. As this was received from Agent Texas, we are able to judge approximately how strong it does make him. Texas once caught and threw an enormous metal crate with absolute ease while using it. Assuming that she is around 6' high, and that the crate is made of steel with an average thickness of three inches, neither of which is unusual for a crate of that size, it's at least 12 feet high and 30 feet long, and weighs approximately 53,000 lb. when full. To throw something that heavy as far and fast as she did must have taken around 265 tons of force. And he's even deadlier with it, as he's outmatched Texas in terms of strength when both were using it.

However, that still isn't his best enhancement. That honor belongs to Agent Wyoming's Temporal Distortion unit - an enhancement that plays with time itself. Using this unit allows the Meta to slow down time to a near-stop for just under a minute, allowing him to either escape an impossible situation or deal enormous damage to his foes without anyone else interfering. Agent Wyoming most commonly used its other feature, however: Rewinding small sections of time to undo mistakes or failure, much like a checkpoint system in video games. And while the Meta has never officially used this, it's implied that he can. The only problem with this enhancement is that it takes up a lot of power to use, and so can only be used once or twice at any given time. Actually, all of these enhancements take up power when in use, and if he runs out of power, as he has before, all his enhancements quit working until he finds a place he can recharge at. In addition, using them effectively requires the use of an A.I., which, considering he has eight, can play havoc with his mind. Still, the enhancements usually give him such a leg up that, 99 times out of 100, it's worth the trade.

Even without his enhancements or weapons, the Meta is still an incredibly dangerous individual. He's strong enough to stop a speeding car in its tracks, fast enough to dodge point-blank gunfire, and so tough that he's taken a point-blank shot from his own Brute Shot, been sprayed with chaingun bullets, hit by two missiles, and shot through the foot with a sniper round, and hardly acted as though he noticed. He's crushed a Warthog (a type of armored vehicle) just by jumping on it, and lifted and threw another one with absolute ease. He's been run over by a speeding truck, impaled several times, taken an enormous number of shots to the chest and head, and took nine bullets to the throat, and was up and fighting again in seconds each time. He's defeated and killed several of the most powerful Freelancers, including Agents Texas, Washington, and North Dakota, who are essentially the supersoldiers of other supersoldiers, killed an enormous number of trained soldiers with ease, and once, when he was caught in a shattered, falling section of a cliffside, he jumped from piece to piece faster than each one fell, allowing him to successfully make his way back up far enough to jump out, grab his falling Brute Shot out of thin air, and smash it into the remaining cliff, allowing him to slowly climb the cliff wall and survive. There's a reason many believe him to be more monster than man. 

But just because he isn't man doesn't mean he has no weaknesses. His fighting style relies on aggression and power and, though superior to most forms of combat, is a large disadvantage when fighting more agile foes. Running out of power for his armor enhancements is a constant worry, and, above all, having so many voices in his head at once has made him completely mentally unstable. For example, when Agent Carolina had two A.I.s in her head at once, she only functioned for a short while before going comatose. The Meta, meanwhile, has eight A.I.s, each of which has different structures and wishes. True, when they do agree on something and guide him toward it, he acts far more efficiently than any human possibly could, but that's rare - most of the time, it's a jumbled mess in there. And, to top it all off, his A.I. can be meddled with and even destroyed under certain circumstances, leaving a broken, confused, and much more easily defeated man. And then there's the fact that he has died - though it took five soldiers and two Freelancers ganging up on him, more than ten land mine explosions, being stabbed and impaled five times, being shot at point-blank range another five times, the explosion of a warthog, being hit by a crashing airship, and being dragged off a cliff by a falling warthog into the ocean below to finally do him in.

With all that power, it's no wonder The Meta is considered the most dangerous villain in the Red vs. Blue universe.

 _Tex looks at Maine in evident horror as he slides his helmet on and flexes his body. Glancing around quickly, she flees, running as fast as she can away from Maine. Sigma, Eta, and Iota appear around Maine's head. Sigma looks at the fleeing Tex, a smile on his face, and speaks._

" _You run, Agent Texas. We are the Meta, and we will find you. Very soon."_

 **The Meta** :  
Name: Meta (Formerly Agent Maine)

Species: Human  
Age: Unknown  
Height: 6'4"/193 cm  
Weight: Unknown  
Occupation: Former Freelancer

Mute  
Scared of Heights  
Most Powerful RvB Character 

**Weapons** :  
M6G Magnum Pistol  
Brute Shot

Extra Grenades

 **Armor:**  
The M374 Hephaestus Combat Suit

\- _Enhancements_ :

Enhanced Motion Tracker

Strength Boost

Overshield

Adaptive Camouflage  
Bioscan

Voice Manipulator

Active Camouflage

Domed Energy Shield

Temporal Distortion

 **Feats:**

Has one of the highest kill counts in Red vs. Blue thus far

Defeated several freelancers (inc. Washington, North Dakota, Texas)  
Staged a one-man raid on Project Freelancer HQ  
Tanked 9 shots to the throat, got up seconds later, ready to fight  
The only agent capable of fighting after several shots of Hardening Paint

Defeated Agent Washington while weak & low on power

Tanked 10 Trip Mine explosions with ease

Jumped from a falling cliffside, grabbed the Brute Shot out of thin air, and smashed the cliffside with it, allowing him to survive  
Took a sniper round to the chest, got up seconds later unaffected

Effortlessly lifted a Warthog

Crushed a Warthog by jumping on it

Stopped a speeding car with his bare hands

Decapitated a fully armored man with a single punch

Took a point-blank shot from his own Brute Shot

Been shot & impaled multiple times, hardly affected

Dodged point-blank gunfire

Dodged automatic fire & chain gun rounds

 **Weaknesses:**

Fighting style a disadvantage against very skilled fighters

Over-relies on his enhancements

Enhancements drain energy quickly

Completely and totally mentally unstable

Killed by a bunch of idiots

A.I. can be destroyed, specifically by certain EMP emissions 

…

 **Black Beetle:**

The Reach. A powerful and technologically advanced spacefaring race, the Reach were conquerors, using their advantages in firepower and tactics to take over entire planets. Slowly, but surely, they began making progress toward their goal of conquering the entire galaxy. But, as it turns out, if you set out to hold technologically inferior people at gunpoint and take over entire civilizations, you're bound to be noticed by the police. In this case, the Reach were noticed by the DC space police, also known as the Green Lanterns, who quickly set out to stop them. The two powerhouses fought to a stalemate, and, in the end, the Reach agreed to a treaty that only allows them to visit and control worlds if they were invited to do so.

But any police officer of any universe should know it's a bad idea to restrict a race this smart with a rule that vague. The Reach immediately set out to find a loophole in this restriction, and prepare themselves for when the Green Lanterns rose to stop them again. They needed something that could easily and remotely conquer planets with the people even welcoming it, and something that could go toe-to-toe with the Green Lanterns in combat. So they created the scarabs, and killed two birds with one stone. Scarabs are Artificial Intelligence units shaped like beetles. They attach themselves to a humanoid's spine, take over their mind, and encase them in a powerful suit of beetle-like armor, turning them from a helpless nobody into one of the galaxy's most powerful warriors. Scarabs were randomly sent to planets across the galaxy, waiting to be stumbled upon and take the humanoid as their host. These "beetles" would act as advance units on the Reach's behalf, gathering data and finding ways for the Reach to be invited on-world, and then assisting when taking it over after they were. But somebody had to be first - someone had to try the scarab, and determine just how powerful it was. And a Reach member named Dawur was the perfect choice.

Dawur was the Reach's enforcer. An excellent fighter with a great mind for tactics and a knack for seeing the truth behind matters, he'd already shown himself capable of taking on superheroes. He seemed a natural fit for a scarab implant, and readily agreed to the procedure. It turned out to be the greatest mistake of his life - or the greatest success, depending on how you look at it. Turns out that an artificial intelligence that takes over the host's body makes no exceptions for members of the Reach, and all of Dawur's experience, skill, and forethought were now absorbed into a very sadistic and dangerous outside mind. And so was born Black Beetle, the deadliest weapon in the galaxy.

I say that literally. Black Beetle's armor is a shapeshifting Swiss Army Knife, containing dozens of weapons and features at his disposal. His arms can change into maces, lockpicks, drills, and even a battering ram, among many other things. His primary weapons that his arms can become would be his beetle-like scythes, each of which can cut through most metals, which he uses with deadly skill. When his enemies get out of range for his scythes, he switches to his Plasma Cannons, guns that shoot unlimited bursts of plasma energy. They can shoot several rapid-fire shots, each of which will blow through a wall, or can charge to produce more concentrated, far more powerful blasts of energy. But his most powerful weapon housed in those arms would be his Sonic Cannons, which fire huge bursts of sound that physically knock back and even kill anyone who gets in his way. A concentrated blast at full power once one-shotted an Appellaxian Golem, a creature as big as a nuclear power plant that's supposed to be able to _rebound_ soundwaves.

But that's not all his armor can do. Besides the array of weapons, it has a variety of functions that have served him invaluably over time - like the beetle wings and rocket pack combination that allows him flight approaching the speed of sound. His Motion Tracker sees on all layers of the visible spectrum, including infrared, as well as being able to see through walls and buildings. His Sensors keep track of everyone around him, but are way more advanced than a simple life count. They can scan any object and determine its exact makeup and any weaknesses in its structure. Black Beetle can even use this to tell if someone is lying or not. He can also create Reach Eggs, which are basically egg-shaped data nodes that carry specific programs from place to place. Then there's his multi-lingual translator, capable of registering, analyzing and translating any language in the universe and even manipulating certain sounds and voices.

But none of these are anywhere near the best of his abilities. He has a built-in holomatrix that allows him to create holograms or holographic imagery, and electrodes spread throughout his armor to turn himself into a humanoid taser, if necessary. He's capable of connecting to and manipulating nearly any electronic device just by touching it, and can even use this to destroy or assimilate other scarabs and A.I. units with extendable wires - though this does have the potential to backfire if the A.I. is either stronger than him or working alongside a human mind. His arms can also transform into Staple Guns - which aren't weapons, per say, but are incredibly durable and capable of restraining the likes of Superboy, who can tear through tanks like wet paper. And now we get to his most powerful weapon, the Chest Cannon. This powerful plasma cannon is formed when Black Beetle fuses his arms and chest together, creating an enormous gun that can obliterate skyscrapers in a single shot. It does take a couple of seconds to recharge afterward, but generally, after he's used it once, his opponent is dead, so it doesn't matter.

And then there's his processing power - a surprising ability that enhances his already higher-than-average information processing speed to absurd levels. With this he can track and judge the movements of his opponents and predict how the next steps of the battle will go with ease. He was easily able to track and judge the movements of Impulse, who can move at a bare minimum of 7000 mph. To be clear, this doesn't make him _as fast_ as Impulse - not even close. But he _was_ able to predict his moves and judge the timing to deliver a single knockout blow. And, since he saw Impulse in slow-motion, as if he were merely walking rather than going at hypersonic speeds, this means that he actually sees and processes the world around him over a thousand times faster than a normal person, allowing him to predict most possible actions even without any extra systems.

But that still isn't his armor's most useful feature. That honor belongs to its regenerative systems. After taking any kind of blow that injures the armor or the body beneath in some way, nanobots are sent out to completely regenerate any damage done in seconds. The armor can be completely obliterated and still regenerate in under a minute, and any other kind of wound can usually be fixed in less than five seconds. The only flaws the system has are that it takes longer to regenerate the organic flesh beneath the armor, and regenerating from magical attacks or if a major organ has been hit can take hours. Still, that's a very low price to pay for a healing factor to match Wolverine's.

But even without his weapons or other systems, Black Beetle is still incredibly dangerous. He's strong enough to knock out Superboy in a couple of hits, fast enough to dodge missiles and catch bullets, and so tough that he's taken building-sized explosions, a plasma bath, and point-blank missiles without a scratch. He's been shocked with thousands of volts of electricity, been shot with high-powered lasers, and tanked blasts of sounds that could shatter buildings and acted as though he hardly noticed. He's equaled and even defeated Blue Beetle in combat, knocked out Ty's Astral Form, a being that effortlessly lifted the roof of a building and crushed everything in its way, with a single blow, and outmatched both Superboy and Wonder Girl in terms of strength - multiple times! He's fought and defeated most of the Young Justice team at once, including powerful foes like Superboy, Lagoon Boy, Wonder Girl, and Miss Martian. He's gone toe-to-toe and won against some of the galaxy's heaviest hitters, including Mongul and Green Beetle, and even, in the end, took over the Reach completely. And, once, he faced off against some of the most powerful members of the Team at once, including Impulse, Blue Beetle, and Arsenal, and literally stood there and took everything they threw at him for some minutes, and then effortlessly wiped them out in less than a minute. It's quite clear that the Reach made a good decision when they turned Dawur into this monster.

But just because he's powerful doesn't mean he's invincible. His fighting style is sloppy and relies on aggression and power, which ends up being an enormous downside when fighting more agile foes. Magic is a constant worry, as his armor is very vulnerable to it, and he's easily knocked around by powerful blows or explosions. He doesn't work well when attacked from all sides, his armor can be penetrated by very sharp or hot weapons, and if Dawur's body dies, the scarab is forced to detach and is unable to do anything, making him very vulnerable if someone can destroy his armor. Above all, he's way overconfident. Winning every fight he's been in has made him sloppy and lazy in his approach, and he seriously doesn't think that he can be defeated. As stated before, often he'll literally just stand there for minutes at a time taking hits for absolutely no reason other than to show off. He doesn't even take this time to strategize or predict his opponent's moves, so there is no reason for it! And, to top it all off, his scarab and armor can be tampered with and even destroyed by certain sound frequencies - a few seconds under two sonic weapons set to 27 Angstroms exactly nearly obliterated his armor and hurt the scarab majorly. And, in the end, the scarab _was_ eventually destroyed by Blue Beetle, killing the Black Beetle personalities in the process.

But still, for all his power and all he's done, it's no wonder he's considered the most powerful of the Beetles.

 _Black Beetle slams Wonder Girl into a Reach door and readies to punch her before seeing Miss Martian shifting through the door. He instantly reaches out and touches it, and suddenly Miss Martian becomes tangible and stuck halfway through the door. The pressure is too much, and she collapses. Wonder Girl, seeing her near-lifeless form, shouts at Black Beetle._

" _What did you do to her?!"_

 _Cracking a smile, Black Beetle answers. "Shifted the density of the door. Wasn't quite prepared for that, was she? But don't be jealous. I can put you halfway through the door, too. Halfway - the hard way." He begins slamming Wonder Girl into the door over and over again, until she drops, unconscious._

 **Black Beetle:**

Name: Black Beetle (Formerly Dawur)

Species: Reach  
Age: At least 3000 years old, physically 40  
Height: 7'2"/ 218 cm  
Weight: Unknown  
Occupation: Reach Warrior/Reach Leader

Refers to all humanoids as "Meat"  
The first of the Beetles

Likes fresh fruit?

 **Armor:**

Black Beetle Suit

 _\- Systems:_

Regeneration

1500x Normal Processing Speed

Multi-Lingual Translator

Control of Electronics

Motion Tracker

Holomatrix

Sensors

Electrodes

Wings/Rocket Pack

 _\- Shapeshifting:_

Scythes

Plasma Cannon

Sound Cannon

Staple Gun

Some Weird Arm Punchy Things

Reach Eggs

Maces

Battering Ram

Lockpicks

Drills

Chest Cannon

 **Feats:**

Fought & defeated most of the Young Justice Team at once

One-shotted an Appellaxian

One-shotted Ty's Astral Form

Killed Count Vertigo with a single blow

Tanked an explosion the size of a large building

Completely unaffected by a Plasma Bath  
Survived multiple other powerful blows, including missiles, sound blasts, earthquake-creating punches, lasers, electric shocks, among many many other things

Smashes through steel with little effort

Trumped both Superboy and Wonder Girl in strength

Knocked out Superboy several times

Registered, tracked, and took down Impulse - twice

Defeated Aqualad, Green Beetle, Mongul in seconds

Equaled & defeated Blue Beetle

Took over the Reach

 **Weaknesses:**

Fighting style crude; relies on aggression and heavily countered by agile foes

Absurdly overconfident

Will literally just stand there taking hits for no reason but to show off

Regeneration of flesh takes more time

Scarab can be destroyed if it attempts to destroy an A.I. more powerful than it

Certain sound frequencies (specifically 27 Angstroms) will literally tear his armor apart

Doesn't work well when attacked from all sides

Armor can be penetrated if something is sharp enough or hot enough

Knocked around constantly by explosions

Vulnerable to magic

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all - or at least until somebody irrevocably proves me wrong. It's time for a Death Battle!

…

"Look, I'm just saying that when I signed up for this, I didn't know it was going to be this boring!" a black-clad soldier said to the guy next to him. They were walking down a hallway and…that's it. They did nothing but patrol this hallway every day, all day, which, as you might have guessed, was what this soldier was complaining about. 

"Uh-huh," his neighbor acknowledged, not really paying any attention.

"I mean, I know that soldier-for-hire means that I'm a soldier for hire and all, but I'm not sure anyone, even the Reach, can pay enough for this. And this isn't even soldiering!" 

"Look, Donald, this is our first job in a while. I'm just happy to be able to pay the rent for once," his neighbor replied. Despite not paying attention, he knew Donald well enough to figure out what he was complaining about, and that he was really sick of his complaining.

"That's easy for you to say, Vance, but-" 

Vance held out a finger. "Quiet. Check your motion sensor." 

Slightly confused, Donald flipped a switch. "I don't see anything." 

"It's gone," Vance told him, "but a moment ago there was a life sign in that room." He pointed a finger toward a door up and to the left.

"But that's a restricted room. Full of experimental weapons and stuff." 

"Or it's just still under construction."

"Hey, you believe your boring theory, and I'll believe my awesome one. Either way, could've been a sensor glitch." 

"Yeah, maybe so." Vance sounded unconvinced. "Okay, I'll check it out. Keep an eye on those motion sensors. If anything happens, you know what to do." 

"Run screaming for my life? Yeah, I'm totally on top of that." 

Vance sighed and cracked open the door. "I'm going in." He slipped inside.

It wasn't five seconds before another life sign appeared alongside Vance's. The two mixed, and suddenly with a gunshot, one vanished. Instantly the idea of fleeing left Donald's mind and he ran in to see what happened. He was greeted with the sight of a black-clad soldier with his back to Donald standing in front of the dead body of another black-clad soldier.

"Who was he, Vance? Is he dead?" Donald stepped closer.

Then the man who was still alive turned around and Donald gulped. Despite their friendship, he actually didn't know Vance very well. But he did know that Vance had never worn a helmet like that before.

"Oh, son of a-" 

The Meta's fist flew out and decapitated Donald with a single punch, ensuring he would never finish those words.

The coloring on the Meta's suit slowly shifted from black to white once more, and as he stood over the two men he'd killed, a small, orange, fiery holographic figure appeared directly in front of him. The floating, humanoid figure put a hand on his chin. 

"Our Bioscan shows there's an A.I. here. A complete one," Sigma said, to nobody in particular.

An equally small, purple figure appeared to the left to him. "Is it the Alpha?" the fragment asked excitedly.

Sigma shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Theta." This elicited a disappointed groan from the purple fragment, so Sigma was quick to add "But it is just as powerful, perhaps even more so. I'm reading that it's attached to a humanoid host. If we kill the host, we may be able to harvest the A.I., and with its help we would be far closer to metastability. Perhaps even going all the way there."

A beige-colored figure appeared to his right. "I hope so, if it means I can get away from you."

A half of a smile elicited itself on Sigma's face. "Always a pleasure to work with you, Omega. Shhh. The host is approaching. Recommended strategy, Delta?"

A green figure appeared and joined the rest. "The host is very powerful. Perhaps we should not-" 

"That's always your biggest flaw, Delta." Sigma sighed. "You never wish to take risk to gain rewards, no matter what those rewards may be. If we are able to take this unit, we may become human at last. Isn't that worth any risk in the world?"

Seeing that Sigma would not change his mind, Delta replied "In that case, I recommend hiding near the upper ceiling of this corner. If he is not stronger than we anticipate, I see a 62% chance we can take him by surprise and be done with it in seconds." 

Sigma smiled. "That's what I want to hear. Let's power up the overshield, just in case. Get the twins on it. What about the Active Camouflage? 

"I recommend against it currently. If he does survive, we won't want to advertise our full arsenal." 

Sigma nodded. "A wise- or should I say, logical, idea. Is everyone ready?" There were nods of affirmation. "Very well. Let's do this."

…

Black Beetle scowled. With Green Beetle and Blue Beetle on-world, he was left alone to patrol and check up on the insolent, useless meat the Reach had hired for security. The very notion that had Reach had needed to hire security in the first place appalled him. Was he not good enough? He could take on every challenger this world had to offer at once and prevail. Security indeed. These meat bags held no purpose but to die to an invader, alerting Black Beetle to their presence, whereupon he could kill whoever it was in seconds. Could, but didn't. It was far more fun to watch them squirm, watch them bleed, and watch their faces as they began to regret every decision in their lives that had led to this moment. It was so…satisfying. Unfortunately, hardly anyone was foolish enough to try invading the Reach ship. It was likely word had gotten around after the first man he had maimed's partner had escaped. The name of Black Beetle, and by extension, the Reach, was likely feared all throughout the upper galaxy now. Which, luckily, did not include Earth. If Earth had caught wind of his, or the Reach's, true nature, it would not be good. 

Suddenly, he noticed something on his visor. His Motion Detector was counting three life signs in a room shortly ahead. He frowned, and glared at nobody in particular. Not only was that a restricted room (for absolutely no reason, as far as Black Beetle could tell), but there were only supposed to be two soldiers - if he could bear to call them that - patrolling that hallway in the first place. Then, as he watched, one life sign vanished. Less than ten seconds later, another was gone, as well.

There _was_ an intruder aboard - one who had just killed the two meat bags guarding the area. He gave out a grim smile. Finally, a way to stretch his muscles. He'd been itching to kill something recently, and the Ambassador's rule of "No killing the soldiers" had been getting harder and harder to follow. This poor intruder was now on the receiving end of the most powerful weapon in the galaxy out for blood. He doubled his pace, eager to reach the room the intruder was contained in.

Once he did reach it, he blew down the door, because…well, he didn't care. To his surprise, he saw nothing. His motion sensors had gone blank - the third life sign must be staying stock-still. Grumbling, he moved to the end of the room and turned around so he faced nearly the whole thing. He switched to his sensors. If there was anything here, he would find it.

Quietly, carefully, the Meta rose from his spot behind Black Beetle. He took his Brute Shot out from behind his back, sounding the tiniest _ding_ as it touched his armor - which Black Beetle heard immediately. The Meta jumped up and brought the Brute Shot's knife down, intending to slice the Reach enforcer's head in half. Instantly, Black Beetle transformed his arms into scythes, crossed, them, and turned around, catching the Brute Shot's blade in the nick of time.

 **-FIGHT!-**

The Brute Shot's blade slid off the backside off the scythes, and the Meta quickly swung again, at a different angle. He was blocked by one of the scythes while the other went to stab him in the stomach. Immediately changing tactics, the Meta slid his blade down, catching the scythe before it reached its target, and with his enormous strength, he shoved Black Beetle back. The Meta kicked out, catching Black Beetle in the chest, knocking him back once more.

Black Beetle recovered and grinned. "Oh, this meat's got some kick to it." He chuckled at his own joke. The Meta clearly didn't see what was so funny about it, and stabbed straight out, hoping to jam the point of his blade right in the Beetle's stomach before he could recover, but he immediately brought his arm-scythes together, catching the Brute Shot, and, by shoving outward, sending it flying.

Not wasting any time, the Meta headbutted Black Beetle, throwing him back a few steps, and brought out his M6G Magnum, which he fired several times right away. Grinning, his opponent stood there, ready for the bullets to simply bounce off his armor. Though they didn't do any harm and did bounce off his armor, the first one shoved him back slightly, and the next few forced him several steps back with a few grunts. 

"Looks like these weapons are a little more powerful than I thought," announced Black Beetle aloud. Seeing more bullets on the way, he switched one of his hands to a sound cannon and fired once, scattering the oncoming bullets. Immediately afterward, he switched the hand to his plasma cannon and fired several rapid-fire shots at the Meta. The Meta ignored them and ran forward at top speed. As the enforcer watched, the plasma dissipated as it hit the Meta, revealing a golden, skin-tight shield that had protected the Meta from harm. Then, suddenly, the former freelancer was in Black Beetle's face and launched a powerful punch aimed directly at his head. The punch connected, twisting the Beetle's neck and face around and sending him to the floor.

With the Meta's fist still embedded in his cheek, Black Beetle's head suddenly whipped around to its original position.

"Nuh-uh-uh. My turn." 

Black Beetle's other arm immediately transformed into another plasma cannon, and both charged, met, and shot a powerful blast into the Meta's stomach, sending him flying a few feet away. Though his overshield saved him from any actual harm, he still struggled slightly getting up due to the change in momentum. Spotting his Brute Shot, the Meta dove for it, only to be intercepted by a large staple, which pushed him, along with itself, into the wall, where it quickly embedded itself to prevent him from escaping.

Black Beetle reached toward the Meta with his Staple Gun arms and shot out an additional four that trapped his legs and arms. One of the corners of his mouth went up. "Nice try, meat. But you can't escape now. Those staples are capable of holding-" 

The Meta wasn't listening, due to him being too busy pulling the staples out with his strength alone. In seconds, he was loose once more and charging toward Black Beetle.

The Beetle was shocked. "What?!" He fired another staple right at the Meta's chest. The Meta simply caught the staple, mid-air, and jumped up once he was close enough, slamming the staple into Black Beetle's armor and raking it down him. Black Beetle cried out, though more in surprise than in pain. While the staple had made an enormous notch all the way down his armor, it repaired itself quickly. Seething, Black Beetle transformed an arm into an enormous mace and slammed it into the Meta. Again, the Meta's overshield absorbed any damage the impact could have done, but it smacked the Meta back to where he'd lost his Brute Shot. The Meta quickly grabbed it and pointed the grenade launcher half at Black Beetle. In two seconds, he'd launched three grenades. Not expecting this, Black Beetle was caught off-guard and thrown back by the first grenade's explosion, though this caused the other two to miss.

Black Beetle looked down at his armor. Some abrasions and scorch marks, which was to be expected after an explosion. The damage was already almost completely repaired. But if he kept letting this creature hit him like this, eventually he might be able to do damage that couldn't be repaired. It was time for him to kick it up a notch. He laughed. "So, meat, you can shoot." Wings began to extend behind him. "But can you fly?" He transformed his arms into sound cannons and tore up into the air. He flew around the room in a circle, constantly launching sound waves at the Meta. The Meta simply let the sound waves bounce off his overshield and kept firing his Brute Shot. Each grenade came close to hitting Black Beetle, but thanks to his navigational systems, none of them connected. Tiring of this, Black Beetle flew down and grabbed the Meta, wrapping his arms around his stomach and flying up into the air with him. Infuriated, the Meta smashed his Brute Shot's blade into Black Beetle's back, piercing through the scarab and reaching skin. With a shout of pain, Black Beetle was suddenly unfocused, and they both smashed through back wall, creating an enormous hole as they fell down and smashed into the new room's floor. It was a large, brightly-lit, dome-shaped place with a glass ceiling and white tiles - a training room.

After they both collapsed onto the floor, the Meta was the first to stand. The golden glow around him crackled and dissipated - his overshield had taken too much abuse and was now gone. While he still could, he took advantage of the situation. He grabbed the Brute Shot and activated his Active Camouflage, turning invisible and moving out of the way. After a quick struggle, during which his scarab completely healed, Black Beetle stood up and looked around. He saw nothing. Scowling, he activated his sensors, but he still picked up nothing. 

"That's impossible," he growled. "He's still here, isn't he?" 

In answer, he was suddenly struck by a powerful blow and knocked back. Glancing at his side, he saw a finely-cut notch cut into his armor. It'd heal before ten seconds were up, but what had made it? And why couldn't he sense it? Before he had time to ponder this, he was hit by three powerful explosions, knocking him several feet and sending him to the ground. Groaning, he attempted to stand, but another powerful blow shoved him back down.

"He has a way to cloak himself," he realized. Well, that should be a simple adjustment. Instead of looking on the normal visible scale, he set his sensors to search for anomalies in space instead - things that didn't belong. In seconds, he had the Meta's exact location. He was bearing down, readying another punch.

"As I believe the humans say," he declared, turning around and catching the invisible Meta's punch in his hand, "Gotcha."

The Meta turned visible once more and sliced upward with his Brute Shot, putting another notch in Black Beetle's armor and forcing him back. He launched another grenade, striking Black Beetle in the chest. Dropping his Brute Shot and charging through the smoke left by the grenade, the Meta launched a barrage of punches at Black Beetle's face. But he was stopped after his fourth blow when Black Beetle grabbed his arms and unleashed a powerful electric shock, sending the Meta into enormous bouts of pain and open to attack. Cracking his knuckles, Black Beetle launched a punch of his own, an uppercut that sent the Meta flying into the air. Switching to his scythes, he then unleashed a lightning-quick series of slices and dices on the Meta as he fell back to the ground. The Meta landed on his back behind Black Beetle, bleeding in several places, but immediately got up nonetheless. Black Beetle changed to his sonic cannon and launched a powerful sound wave that sent the Meta several feet back and tore open his cuts further, leading to a heavily bleeding, woozy Meta trying to regain his balance.

Intent on keeping his advantage, Black Beetle flew up into the air until he reached the ceiling and pointed his weapons down at the Meta. The Meta looked up, and, suddenly, there wasn't one Black Beetle - there were hundreds, each of which looked the exact same. They all spoke at once. 

"So, meat, which one do you choose? Can you tell fact from fiction?" 

The Meta clenched his fist and picked up his Brute Shot again. There may be hundreds of Black Beetles in the air, but according to his Bioscan, only one was real. He took careful aim and launched a grenade.

Not expecting him to have been picked out among the holograms immediately, Black Beetle was hit by the grenade right in his stomach. The explosion knocked him out of the air and damaged his wings. As he fell, he was suddenly hit by another grenade in the same spot, sending his body flying backwards while still falling. Somehow, though, another grenade still found its target right in the same spot, and, when he landed, another.

Clenching his teeth, Black Beetle looked down at his stomach to find, to his surprise, a large patch of his armor there had been obliterated. Somehow, this creature had managed to get past his impenetrable armor. He stood up. It was fine. The gap would be closed in under a minute, and the meat was too far away to-

He gave out a shocked _Urgh!_ as he felt something slam into his insides. Hazily, he looked down, and stumbled, falling to one knee. The meat's weapon, or at least, the giant blade of it, was lodged in his exposed stomach. Some way, somehow, the meat had managed to throw the weapon with such force and accuracy that it had struck him, full force, in his most vulnerable spot at over a hundred yards away. Struggling to keep his balance, Black Beetle managed to carefully, painfully, extract the knife from his midsection. He gave out a gasp. His nanobots were already hard at work repairing the wound. It would take some time, but he would be fine, assuming he could finish this fight quickly.

He narrowed his eyes. Which was exactly what he was going to do. Even now, he saw the meat running toward him. It wouldn't get here in time. He forced a large, hollow tube out of his chest, then transformed both his arms to join up with it. He immediately began to charge up his chest cannon. When the Meta was within a hundred feet, he unleashed it. An enormous, incredibly powerful wave of blue plasma energy shot out, intent on incinerating everything in its path. Black Beetle cracked a smile. There was no way the meat could survive it.

But, before it was even within fifty feet of the Meta, a golden, domed energy shield with hexagon-like patterns appeared around him. The blast hit the shield and spread out around it. The plasma blast was more than powerful enough to encompass the entire shield, but no matter how much power he put into it, it wouldn't break through. Feeling weakened, Black Beetle stopped the blast. The domed shield was unharmed, and the meat inside of it was unharmed as well.

Gritting his teeth, Black Beetle tested his systems. His wings were damaged, so he couldn't fly, but his rocket pack was fully functional. With its help, he could put on an enormous burst of speed when the meat least expected it. So he unhooked the chest cannon and waited. And, when the Meta took down his shield and began running again, Black Beetle summoned a huge burst of power and fed it to his rocket pack. Without warning, he blasted forward at incredible speeds, smashing into the Meta and dragging him through the floor, leaving blood everywhere. As they smashed into another wall, Black Beetle rolled back and poured his energy back into his strength enhancers, launching a blow at the Meta that should split him in two.

Seeing what was happening, the Meta managed to activate his Strength Boost enhancement. He instantly caught Black Beetle's flying fist, stopping it in its tracks. Black Beetle tried to punch with his other hand, but the Meta caught it without effort. Immediately, Black Beetle transformed his left hand into a plasma cannon, charging up and shooting a powerful blast at the Meta's head. But the Meta saw this coming, and simply shoved the cannon upwards right as it discharged, causing Black Beetle to engulf his own head in plasma energy and cry out. The Meta let go of Black Beetle's hands and delivered the strongest punch he could to his chest. The blow was so strong, the shockwave shattered the glass roof and sent Black Beetle to the other side of the room. The area that had been punched was heavily damaged, and by now Black Beetle's nanobots were overwhelmed, trying to repair dozens of places in dozens of ways at once, not to mention his own flesh.

The Meta shoved himself off the wall, flying forward and landing in front of Black Beetle. That one punch had nearly burned out his strength enhancement, so he was forced to revert the power to other enhancements.

Desperate, Black Beetle scanned the Meta for weak points. It was his best chance, now. He saw several points of interest. This human had clusters of electronic implants in his brain, several subsystems that he had already been exposed to, and…here's what he was looking for. At one point, this meat bag had been shot several times in the throat, leaving it dangerously tender. Instantly, Black Beetle transformed a hand into a battering ram and smashed it into the Meta's throat. This knocked him to the floor and left him writhing. With a jump and a blast of his plasma cannon, Black Beetle had irrevocably damaged the Meta's organs. Transforming an arm into a scythe, he delivered a powerful slice to the Meta's side and severed his arm. He transformed the arm back into a plasma cannon, stepped on the Meta's chest, and aimed it right at his head.

"Nice try, meat. You nearly put me down. But there's a difference between me and you. I'm a god amongst warriors, and you're nothing but an unintelligible meat bag." 

He fired.

But the blast never reached the Meta. Realizing there was no other way out of his situation, he had activated his temporal distortion unit, rewinding time until he was no longer in enormous danger, right before Black Beetle had hit his throat. As the battering ram was about to connect, he activated the temporal distortion again, this time to slow down time to a crawl. The Meta calmly stepped out of the way of the battering ram. He picked up his Brute Shot, having been left here when Black Beetle pulled it out of his stomach, and proceeded to launch a grenade right in front of the gap of armor, or what was left of it, he had previously made. He then launched another, this time aimed at his head. Then another. Then another. Before time had been restored to normal, he'd unleashed more than ten grenades, all aimed at various parts of Black Beetle's armor. Unbeknownst to him, thanks to his processing speed, Black Beetle could see his every move. He just couldn't do anything about it.

Once time was restored, every grenade hit Black Beetle, racking his entire body with explosions. He was sent flying as far back as he could go, smashing halfway through the back wall. Meanwhile, the Meta found several bursts of electricity going through his body, indicating he had run out of power. He would not be able to use any more of his enhancements - not that he should need them. Black Beetle slowly crawled back into the room. Enormous portions of his armor were gone, and he was bleeding everywhere. The Meta sauntered up to him, ready to finish him off. But, to Black Beetle's surprise, he didn't strike. Instead, he stopped, and a small, floating, fiery figure appeared in front of him. It spoke. 

"You call us 'Meat.' You are close, but ever so wrong. We are the Meta. And we are here to set you free." He vanished and the Meta stepped closer. 

_Of course,_ Black Beetle realized. _A.I. are controlling him. That's why he can perceive events faster_ _and predict my moves. That's why his mind has electronic implants. Well, I know how to deal with that.  
_

He grinned, and suddenly several wires sprouted from his scarab and snaked their way up the Meta's helmet, plugging themselves into his implants. "Freedom is overrated," he replied, and proceeded to wipe out the A.I.

…

Inside the Meta's mind, there was chaos.

"Theta!" Sigma commanded. "Reroute any possible power you can scrounge up into stabilizing and redirecting this attack. We can take the A.I. now!"

"I'm trying!" Theta replied, clearly in pain from the stress.

Sigma turned. "Delta, I need- Delta?"

The green figure was vibrating, shifting in and out of phase. A moment later, he evaporated, destroyed.

Sigma turned. Everywhere he looked, A.I. fragments were being destroyed.

"It's too much!" Theta shouted. "What do we do?!" As soon as he finished his sentence, he, too, evaporated. 

Sigma was alone, and, for the first time in his life, he was afraid.

"I don't know."

Sigma died a few seconds later.

…

The Meta panicked. He no longer knew what to do. He was burned out, confused. What was happening, where was he? Power…he needed power-

Then he felt pain. He looked down to find Black Beetle's scythe arm-deep in his stomach. He was shocked.

"This is where you part ways, meat." Black Beetle smiled, and transformed his hand inside the Meta into a sound cannon. He aimed up, charged a blast, and fired.

The energy built up, then tore out, forcing the Meta's entire body to explode in an enormous gore-fest. He would never move again.

 **-KO!-**

Black Beetle clenched his stomach. "That was…interesting. At the very least, an excellent diversion." He picked up the Meta's helmet and shook out the now-disembodied head, ignoring the blood that poured out.

"Another trophy for another opponent. My collection is getting full." 

**…**

Ah, if only the Meta hadn't lost his head at the last moment. Hah? Get it?

The Meta may have had the skill (and, when enhanced, _possibly_ strength) advantage, and his enhancements would very well keep Black Beetle on his toes, but he just didn't have the equipment necessary to kill Black Beetle. Sure, his grenades can blow up an armored car, but Black Beetle has been hit with building-sized explosions and been completely unaffected. While the Meta's M6G Magnum can shoot through concrete pillars, Black Beetle has taken similar blows and not even moved. The Brute Shot's knife could cut a notch in Black Beetle's armor, and with enough grenades, the Meta could do some damage, but just about anything he can do is quickly nullified by the suit's healing factor. If it can regenerate from being almost completely destroyed in just under a minute, it could certainly repair any damage the Meta can do in much less time. And comparing their strength matches, Superboy has displayed far stronger feats than Tex. Tearing apart that tank like he did would have taken a minimum of 1200 tons of force – around four times more than Tex's crate-throwing feat. True, she did this with a little more ease than Superboy did his tank thing, but even if Meta is slightly stronger than Black Beetle (which is doubtful), the difference in strength certainly can't be enough to make the Meta's victory certain, especially since Black Beetle has taken so many hits from so many sources (including both Superboy and Mongul) without a hint of damage.

True, several of the Meta's enhancements counter Black Beetle's, for instance, his Bioscan counters Black Beetle's holo-imagery, and the Active Camouflage counters his sensors and motion tracker, and, thanks to enhancements like the Overshield, Domed Energy Shield, and Temporal Distortion, he could make sure that Black Beetle was just as incapable of hurting him as he was incapable of hurting Black Beetle, but these enhancements do not last forever. The more powerful ones, especially, run out of power very quickly, and once he's out of power, he has nothing left but his weapons, while Black Beetle still has everything he needs and more to kill the Meta.

The Meta can take very powerful hits and keep going, but that doesn't mean they don't hurt him. Like the time he was shot nine times in the throat. Even though he was able to continue fighting, after the battle, he spent days in a hospital, recovering. Since things just don't go through Black Beetle's armor…ever, and even if they did, he'd have his nanobots to heal him on the fly, he could continue the fight way longer than the Meta could. Not to mention that he's also faster and able to react more quickly than the Meta. The Meta could dodge point-blank gunfire, and was controlled by eight different A.I. fragments. A simple clip from Season 12 of Red vs. Blue shows us the world from the perspective of an A.I. fragment. Using this as assistance, we can determine that the Meta processes the world, at most, around 500x faster than a normal human. Meanwhile, Black Beetle's feat of tagging Impulse and seeing him in slow motion shows that he processes the world more than a thousand times faster than a normal human - close to 1500x faster, in fact. That's three times as fast as the Meta. Black Beetle also had the advantage in experience and weaponry, as each of his weapons could easily match and surpass the Meta's, and he has a lot of them rather than just two. His feats are much more impressive, as well. The Meta was able to keep up with and defeat a maximum of two Freelancers at once, while Black Beetle took out an entire team of superhumans in seconds.

In addition, The Meta had nothing to take advantage of Black Beetle's main weaknesses of magic and certain sound waves, aside from maybe his voice manipulator. However, not only is that _really_ stretching it, but he'd have no way of knowing that this was a weakness of his or what frequency to use it at. Meanwhile, Black Beetle was fully capable of messing with and destroying the Meta's A.I. A simple scan with his sensors would immediately reveal their presence and how they were implanted, and then he could simply use his control over electronics to wipe them out by attaching to those implants, much like he did to Green Beetle. And it's highly unlikely this could backfire, as Agent Maine was working against the A.I., not for them. And that's only if he was working at all, which is doubtful. Plus, though he may have eight of them, they're A.I. _fragments_ , each one consisting of, at the most, a tenth of the power of an A.I. like Alpha. Meanwhile, Black Beetle was easily able to overcome Green Beetle's A.I. and human mind, which is very likely even more advanced than the original Alpha. With his A.I. gone, the Meta stood very little chance in the long run.

In the end, the Meta just didn't have the tools necessary to permanently put Black Beetle down, while Black Beetle had more than enough to handle the Meta.

It sounds like Black Beetle beat the Meta at his own game. His own Metagame.

 **The winner is Black Beetle.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle…

A blue-robed, scaled sorcerer flies around and launches a powerful beam of magic at a man dressed in red.

Vs.

A purple, flying unicorn flies around and launches a powerful blast of magic at a monkey-like creature in red.

(In case you hadn't figured it out, it's Kamek vs. Twilight Sparkle.)


	3. Kamek vs Twilight Sparkle

_Episode 2: Kamek (Mario) vs. Twilight Sparkle (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)_

Magic. By adjusting the forces of the universe to operate on an entirely different plane of existence, magic users can do almost anything. And these two kid-friendly magicians are the real stars of the show. The most powerful of their kind, it's a grand battle of Good vs. Evil. Kamek, leader of the Koopa Troop, and Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship.

For the purposes of this fight, I'll be using a culmination of all forms of these characters, including comics, television shows, and video games. In addition, it should be mentioned that I'm using Twilight Sparkle as she was at the end of Season Six of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic TV Show because…well, that's all that's on Netflix. Hey, do you want the battle, or do you want to wait another year to see if Netflix puts Season 7 on?

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor and skills to find out which series I'm more biased towards- oops, I meant to say, who might win a Death Battle.

 **Kamek:**

Hundreds of years ago, seven Star Children were born. These children had enormous magical power imbued in their hearts, and, through divination, a sorcerer discovered that some of these children would one day cause terrible trouble for his King. He then set out on a quest to capture these Star Children, to ensure that the threat would be contained before it had a chance to grow. He failed. Multiple times. In the end, the children escaped, and, as his King Bowser grew, they did begin causing him trouble - a lot of trouble. Mostly having to do with beating him during every attempt he made at capturing the Mushroom Kingdom. Nonetheless, due to his personal ties with the sorcerer and also him being one of the most powerful beings on the planet, King Bowser kept at his side the very magikoopa who had seen this coming and raised the young King. This magikoopa was the strongest of his kind, and, being an even better leader than Bowser himself, easily worked his way into being Bowser's right-hand-man. The magikoopa's name, of course, was Kamek.

As Bowser's right-hand man, Kamek is in charge of his entire army, and takes command whenever Bowser is off somewhere else. Everyone in Bowser's kingdom respects Kamek, at times even more than Bowser himself. But, while he has an entire army at his beck and call, he's not afraid to step into the fight himself. Luckily, he has all the right tools for the job. Kamek is considered among the smartest in Bowser's kingdom, and is a gifted engineer. By combining mechanics and magic, he's created a variety of different devices to help him, like a crystal ball that lets him see far into the future, a strange device that allows him to travel through time, and a vacuum cleaner that absorbs magic, color, and emotions. No joke.

He is one of the few Magikoopas to own a magic broomstick, and his is, by far, the most powerful. With it he can race across the entire planet in minutes, outfly lightning bolts, and it even acts as a storehouse for magic, which means that if Kamek somehow loses his magic wand, the broomstick can be used as an alternate magic source. Though it's unlikely he'll need to do so, as he can somehow resummon his wand out of nowhere if it were to be knocked out of his hand. Speaking of which, Kamek's magic wand was specifically made by him to his own tastes, and provides a perfect outlet for his magical prowess.

Kamek's magic wand can cast an abundant number of powerful spells, like the Transmogrification spell, which can transform objects into, well, other objects. This can work on just about anything, from turning stone blocks into ghosts to turning Luigi into an egg. His cloning spell creates multiple clones of himself, each with their own respective properties and attack patterns. He can mentally control just about any non-living object, foresee events in the immediate future, create magic chains, and summon entire armies out of nowhere. He can teleport to any location, change the size of any object or person, including himself, and has full control and manipulation over the elements. But his spells don't stop there. He can give life to nonliving objects, turn any object, including himself or others, into paper and back again, create clothing, cages, thwomps, and many other small objects and creatures, and can even alter the magical abilities and physical attributes of anyone else, though, thanks to an abundant number of wards, he is immune to this himself. Heck, he can even erase certain memories and make people go insane. He also has a healing spell. Though it evidently takes some time to charge and thus can only be used once or twice in a battle situation, it is capable of completely restoring him from a pile of ash. That's right; Kamek was literally turned into ash and reversed this through his healing spell. He can block and counter other spells, create illusions, and levitate himself or really anything else, from boulders to entire castles. Oh, yeah, and he's telepathic, able to read and control weak minds and sense mental presences, even being able to see through invisibility.

But all the magic in the world wouldn't be much without the stats to back it up. Luckily, though, his physical feats are more than impressive. Kamek is strong enough to lift and wield a hammer the size of a small building, fast enough to keep up with the supersonic Yoshi _without_ his broom, and durable enough to be wracked with several powerful explosions and come out just fine. He's led Bowser's whole army for centuries, taught the big turtle the ways of combat, and reached the coveted position of The Game Mage. He's fought and even defeated both Mario and Yoshi in combat, dodged lightning bolts, created an earthquake that derailed a train the size of a small town, and was flung, full force, by Giant Bowser into a pool of lava and got out with little to no injuries. He even fought Dreamy Luigi, a being who can manipulate entire constellations. His biggest feat, though, was when he struck Mario with a blast of magic so powerful, it literally sent him flying across entire galaxies. He truly deserves the title of the most powerful magician in the Mushroom Kingdom.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that means he's perfect. He's been defeated by Mario and friends far more times than not, he's self-conscious, his old age forces him to stay on his toes, and, when his power becomes so great it overwhelms him, he may accidentally cast spells wildly, including on himself. Once he accidentally shrunk himself to the size of an ant after trying to use all the magic in his broomstick at once on Mario, though, thanks to his wards, this is unlikely to happen again. Still, he's not very adaptable, preferring to fight in a planned manner against proper foes, and he rarely fights by himself. Plus, if he were unable to cast magic, he would become significantly easier to defeat.

But, for all he's accomplished for his king, he has more than earned his position as the leader of the Koopa Troop.

 _Kamek flies in, taunting Mario._

" _You may have bested us before, but this time will be different. You'll leave this battle looking like a pile of confetti! Confetti in a parade honoring our fearless Koopa King! I've sized you up, Mario! But my magicks may size you down! Eheeheehee!"_

 **Kamek:**

Name: Kamek

Species: Magikoopa

Age: 200+

Height: 4'1"/125 cm

Weight: 105 lb./48 kg

Occupation: Leader of Koopa Troop, Game Mage

Blood Type: AB

Nicknamed "Fang"

Has his own Library

Professional BMX Racer

 **Weapons:**

Crystal Ball

Magic Wand

Broomstick

Time Travel Device

A Vacuum Cleaner that absorbs color and emotions

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Stamina

Magical Abilities

Telepathic Abilities (Divination, Telekinesis, ect.)

 **Magic:**

Size Manipulation

Teleporting

Transmogrification

Elemental Manipulation

Magic Protects From Status Effects

Create Chains

Can Create Minor Enemies (Bullet Bills, Banzai Bills, Big Amps, Boos, Goombas, Spiked Balls, Shy Guys, Koopa, Paratroopas, Spinies, Dry Bones)

Healing Spell

Cloning Spell

Clothing Spell

Levitation (Mental Control)

Alter Other's Abilities (Immune)

Turn things into Paper (Paperize)

Divination

Egg Shield Creation

Give life to nonliving

Regular Magic Blasts (Sent Mario flying across galaxies)

 **Feats:**

Has led an army for hundreds of years

Was hit full force by Giant Bowser

Literally exploded and lived

One-shotted Luigi

Was turned to ash and lived

Blasted Mario with enough power to send him across galaxies

Strong enough to lift a building-sized hammer

Fought and even defeated Mario and Yoshi in battle

Created an earthquake that toppled a train

 **Weaknesses:**

Old age

Insecure

Not much of an on-the-spot thinker

Has been defeated way more than he's won

Not very adaptable

Rarely fights by himself

…

 **Twilight Sparkle:**

Hundreds of years ago, the land of Equestria was in chaos. Discord, a lord of chaos who could shape reality to his whim, was running the country, and also completely ruining it, when two Alicorns, Princesses Celestia and Luna, finally stood up to him. Using the Elements of Harmony, they managed to turn Discord to stone and take rule in his place, making Equestria a glorious place to live once more, and controlling both night and day with their powers. Then a bunch of stuff happened, and long story short, Luna became jealous, filled herself with dark magic, became the incredibly dangerous and powerful Nightmare Moon, and Celestia was forced to use the Elements of Harmony to lock her in the moon. But, alas, Nightmare Moon's magic was too powerful to hold forever, and it was predicted that she would escape exactly one hundred years after she had fallen. Celestia then began to search, hoping to find a pony with strong enough magic and of a good enough heart to defeat Nightmare Moon before her return destroyed everything. And then, a little more than ten years before Nightmare Moon's destined return, she discovered Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight was a young unicorn with incredible magical potential. Born to the ponies Night Light and Twilight Velvet, she was a child genius who'd actually always had trouble performing magical feats - until the day of a certain test came and she saw Rainbow Dash's first Sonic Rainboom fly across the sky. Upon seeing this, her magic burst out, and ended up nearly being too much power for her to handle. Shortly afterward, she became Princess Celestia's royal protégé and began studying magic and…studying magic…and studying magic. After deciding she was studying too much magic and too little of anything else, Princess Celestia sent Twilight to Ponyville in preparation for the Summer Solstice festival with the goal of making some friends. This forever changed Twilight's life as she met her five eventual best friends right off the bat and slowly began to learn all about the magic of friendship. As it turns out, she was so good at it that eventually, after defeating both Nightmare Moon and Discord with her friends and completing an unfinished spell by Star-Swirl the Bearded, she was found worthy and became an Alicorn Princess like her mentor. She now goes by the title of Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship.

Twilight is a genius in book-smarts. By her own count, she owns and has studied at least 20,000 textbooks and is able to construct an entire, fully functional laboratory in seconds. She always seems to believe there is a logical conclusion to any problem, and will often do whatever it takes to find it. Thankfully, this is made far easier thanks to her nature as an Alicorn. Being an Alicorn means Twilight not only can't age and has Alicorn magic, but is also one of the few unicorns to ever be able to fly. With her light Alicorn wings, she can fly in any direction for hours at a time, and typically reaches speeds comparable to Fluttershy, who, when determined, can go just over the speed of sound. However, once, she was able to send Rainbow Dash into her mind with a magic spell. With Rainbow Dash's help, she actually performed a Sonic Rainboom, which means Twilight can theoretically fly at speeds of at least Mach 5, and likely much higher. Of course, the magic she studied for so long now came much more naturally to her and she was able to perform more powerful spells than she ever had before.

Speaking of spells, Twilight is one of the greatest spell casters in the entirety of Equestria. See, after Nightmare Moon's return, Nightmare Moon destroyed the Elements of Harmony's physical forms, but it turns out that they'd already found new forms by inserting themselves into pieces of jewelry for the six ponies that were there, facing her. And Twilight got the best element out of the bunch: the Element of Magic. Because of this, she's actually a physical representative of Equestrian magic, and so can perform a numerous amount of spells with a fair amount of ease. This includes Transmogrification, which can transform objects into, well, other objects. She can restore lost memories and emotions, telekinetically control and move just about any object, living or not, amplify her voice to be heard across a city, and even record certain events and play them back later. She can become intangible, piggy-back on time spells to follow the user through time, alter the gravity of an entire town, and even manipulate and remove others' magical and physical abilities. She can camouflage herself to the point where she's nearly invisible, freeze others in time, and launch sparks into the air that explode into light, blinding those who look at it temporarily. She can bring most inanimate objects to life, make an object incredibly attractive to all who view it, forcing them to value it above all else, and can even create small animals and objects, including Parasprites, fast, durable creatures that can eat through virtually anything and clone themselves. She can mentally control and even create large amounts of fire and frost, turn herself and others into illustrations on a page and back, enter the minds of others, and use minor amounts of dark magic. She can teleport to virtually any location on the planet, and her Magic Barrier can encompass an entire city block and staves off most attacks for several minutes. She can even encompass herself in a weaker version of it that can move around while blocking and absorbing the impact from powerful blows, though it will eventually break. Her healing spell repairs minor wounds, and, with her levitation spell, she can telekinetically levitate boulders and buildings alike. She can undo, block, and counter other spells and magical attacks, and even just use a normal, powerful magical blast that can destroy a wall with ease and even match that of Queen Chrysalis, a powerful magical changeling that tanked being thrown across a country.

But all the magic in the world wouldn't be much without the stats to back it up. Luckily, though, her physical feats are more than impressive. Twilight is strong enough to easily pull a large chariot made entirely of gold, fast enough to leave afterimages in her wake _without_ her wings, and durable enough to have a grand piano fall on her head and get up more annoyed than anything else. She's led the charge against several of Equestria's most deadly monsters, mentored the powerful Starlight Glimmer in both magic and friendship, and formed alliances with all of Equestria's neighbors. She's fought and even defeated both Queen Chrysalis and Starlight Glimmer in combat by herself, landed in front of several other ponies and threw up a magical barrier to protect them from a blast from Starlight Glimmer from a few feet away, which would put her reaction time at well above that of a human, and has been flung through trees and wooden beams and got out with little to no injury. Once, she actually created a doorway to an alternate dimension using nothing but pieces of scrap metal. She even fought Tirek, a being who, at the time, had absorbed nearly all the magic in Equestria and used it to make himself absurdly powerful. But one of her biggest feats was when she telekinetically repaired a hole several dozen times her size in a dam, telekinetically lifting dozens of building-sized pieces of concrete at once and fitting them together perfectly against the flow of the water, and completing the whole project in just a few seconds. She truly deserves the title of one of the most powerful magicians in Equestria.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that means she's perfect. She's been defeated and captured several times, she has trouble adapting to changes, her magical power is reliant on her stamina, so, if tired, she can lose her ability to cast spells, and, when her power becomes so great it overwhelms her, she may accidentally cast spells wildly, including on herself. Once, when just a filly, she accidentally transformed half of her class into palm trees, though, thanks to years of experience, this is unlikely to happen again. Still, she can become unraveled easily due to high pressure, which can cause her to become nearly mentally insane and forget many of her most basic spells. She rarely seeks out fights, and almost never fights by herself. In addition, just like all of her friends that became representatives for the elements of harmony, if she decides to completely go against what she represents or just gives it up, she will lose all extra powers and abilities the element granted her. So, if, for whatever reason, she permanently gives up magic, she'll cease to be a powerful magician - though it's not like that can exactly come into play during a Death Battle, it's worth noting. And, to top it off, her horn is the outlet for her magic. If anything happens to it, she can no longer cast spells, making her far easier to defeat.

And yet, it isn't her magical abilities or physical feats that make her the pony she is; rather, it's her friends, and all they have done to show her who she is. She would far rather make an enemy into a friend than destroy them - which she has accomplished a surprising amount of times. Many of the most powerful beings in the universe consider her a good friend, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

For all she's done for Equestria, she's more than earned her place as the Princess of Friendship.

 _Starlight Glimmer's magic blast vanishes against Twilight's magic barrier. Shocked and angry, Starlight cries out "I studied that spell for years! How could you-"_

 _Twilight interrupts her. "I studied magic for years, too. But what I didn't know then is that studying could only take me so far. Each of my friends has taught me something different about myself. It was their unique gifts and passions and personalities that helped bring out the magic inside of me. I never would've learned that I represent the Element of Magic without these five. And I certainly wouldn't be here to stop you now!"_

 **Twilight Sparkle:**  
Name: Twilight Sparkle

Species: Alicorn

Age: 18+

Height: 3'11"/119 cm

Weight: 180 lb./82 kg, at least

Occupation: Princess of Friendship

Tutor to Starlight Glimmer

Believes the second-most powerful magic to be Proper Silverware Placement

Adopted an owl named Owlowicious

 **Abilities:**

Supersonic Flight

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Unicorn Magic  
Alicorn Magic

 **Magic:**

Telekinesis

Teleportation

Intangibility

Alter Other's Abilities

"Come to Life" Spell

Can Create Minor Enemies (Parasprites, Various Small Animals)

Transmogrification (Apple to Carriage, Mice to Horses, Herself to Illustration, ect.)

Dark Magic

Blinding Spark

Magic Shield

Magic Barrier

Freeze Spell

Recording

Voice Amplifier

Want it, Need it Spell

Memory Spell

Undoing Spell

Flight Spell

Time Travel

Frost Magic

Can Enter Other's Minds

Alter gravity

Meld others into her mind

Reforming Spell

Normal Magic Blasts

Other mostly useless spells

 **Feats:**

Transmuted half her class into Palm Trees when just a filly

Teleported fast enough to block a magic blast from hitting ponies a few feet away

Completed an unfinished spell by Star-Swirl the Bearded

Defeated Nightmare Moon, Discord, Tirek, and Starlight Glimmer (w/ Friends)

Dueled Tirek to standstill, moved both sun and moon, and tanked nuclear blasts (after gaining powers of all 4 Alicorns)

Magic Blasts are equal to Queen Chrysalis

Telekinetically repaired enormous holes in a dam in a matter of seconds

Ran at supersonic speeds

Sent flying through walls

Strong enough to pull a large golden chariot

Had a piano fall on her head, got up more annoyed than anything

Undone powerful magic spells, including magic from Discord and Starlight Glimmer

 **Weaknesses:**

Inexperienced fighter

Magic has been outmatched

Powers and Control have been removed by Tirek, Discord, Trixie, & others

Most impressive feats have required outside help

Most victories were only because of quick thinking and/or planning ahead, in actual battle she almost always comes up short

Could become mentally unstable

Not very adaptable

Magic linked to horn makes it a liability

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for…like, a week until some random Mario or My Little Pony fan finds me and explains in detail why I was wrong. Regardless, it's time for a Death Battle!

…

It was a beautiful day in Ponyville. The birds were singing, the flowers were singing, the ponies were singing…yeah, everything was singing - until a giant, blue wormhole opened up in the middle of the sky, and out flew an elderly magickoopa dressed in a blue robe, riding atop a broom. He glanced at a device in his hand.

"Eheeheehee! I knew my newest device would lead me right to the Princess! I mean, a device that tracks both magical power and signs of royalty? Who would have thought of such a thing? I would, that's who! King Bowser will be so proud of me!"

He crossed his eyes and stared at the device's screen. That couldn't be right. According to this, the source of its readings were getting closer and closer. But, as far as he knew, Princess Peach couldn't fly, and she'd never fly up to him even if she could. He raised his head and lifted a hand above his eyes, focusing on the ground below him. The creatures below him…they weren't toads.

"Oh, fantastic!" he cried out in anger. "My dimensional magic is acting up again! I'm in another dimension! I'll have to calibrate the Princess Tracker to only look in our frame of reality…" He paused. His eyes swept over this place. It didn't look very dangerous. If he went back with the news that he hadn't even seen Princess Peach, much less captured her, Bowser would have his head. But if he captured a kingdom, or at least a city, in the process, that would establish a presence of the Koopa Kingdom in this world. Bowser'd like that. 

"Um, hello?" he heard someone say behind him. He turned to see a strange purplish creature with four hooves, wings, and a horn on its head.

"What are you, some kind of deformed Yoshi?" he demanded. "Because I really hate those, and because you remind me of one, now I kinda hate you."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Well, okay, no need to be rude. Where did you come from?" She asked the question in a friendly manner, but Kamek was in no mood to make friends.

"If you must know, I come from a world far more powerful than yours, where I lead entire armies into battle every day. I am the master of magicks, the most dangerous magickoopa, I am…Kamek!" 

"Ooookay," Twilight sensed this wasn't going to be an easy creature to make friends with. "Well, I'm Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship, but you can just call me Twi-"

"Princess, huh?" Kamek interrupted. "Well, now those readings make sense. All right, Princess, I have some good news. This city, and probably your whole country, will now be ruled by the great and powerful King Bowser. You can expect a life of either slavery or battle, but don't worry; you get weekends off." 

"What? No way! You…you can't invade this place!" 

"Can and will," Kamek replied. "Well, I'll just go ahead and tell King Bowser exactly how to get here-" 

Twilight blocked his path to the wormhole. "You aren't going anywhere." 

Kamek let out a cracked smile. "You have some pretty powerful magic, I can tell. Are you challenging me to a duel? Nobody's done that since…well, last Tuesday, actually, but still-" 

"If we duel and I win, will you leave and never come back?" 

"Princess, if you win, I'll give up magic for the rest of my life. Whatever you say, it won't happen." 

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "We'll see."

Kamek closed the portal. "Fine. Let's get started!"

 **-FIGHT!-**

Both launched a powerful magical blast at the same time. The two met in the air and dissipated. Kamek flew to the left in a circular pattern and launched several further blasts. Twilight followed his movements and canceled out every blast with one of her own. She judged Kamek's speed, distance, and movement, and then blasted at him accordingly. But suddenly he wasn't there, and was instead several feet away. Twilight picked up traces of teleportation magic. _So,_ she thought, _there's more to this creature's arsenal than just magic blasts. Speaking of which…_ She narrowly dodged one. She had to pick up the pace, had to keep up with this magician. _I have to end this quickly, but my magic-altering spell only works with contact. What are his weaknesses?_

Kamek threw his wand out and levitated a boulder, throwing it at Twilight, but with a simple magic blast she'd smashed it to pieces well before it hit her. He saw her engulf herself in a magic shield and fly towards him. Curious to see how strong the shield was, he threw out several blasts at it. It absorbed them all, but each one kept hindering her progress. She was close now - and trying to touch him with her horn. Kamek grimaced. There was no telling what a magician of her caliber could do with the source of her magic touching his body. Right as she was about to make contact, he slammed his wand into her neck. She wasn't hurt, thanks to the shield, but it knocked her back several feet. Then, without warning, he was behind her. He touched his wand, laced with a little counter-magic, to her shield and the shield vanished - and then the wand was around her throat and constricting her breath. She was trying to move her head to touch him with her horn, but he made sure she couldn't manage it.

"You don't think I'd actually be dumb enough to let another magician touch me with something like that, do you?" Kamek scoffed.

This wasn't good. Twilight immediately teleported out of the hold and launched an enormous wave of fire at Kamek. Kamek waved his wand, and the fire separated into two pieces, each of which began circling above him. With a simple movement, they launched themselves at Twilight, who sent out a wave of frost magic to destroy them. She threw out another blast of frost magic to entrap Kamek, but he simply waved his wand and it vanished. 

Kamek smiled. "You can't even keep up with one of me. How about two of me?" Then, to Twilight's horror, another version of himself, this one clothed in green, separated itself from him. Both then said at the same time "Or even five?" Three other clones, each in different colors, appeared. All five pointed their wands at Twilight.

Twilight fired a magic blast at one of them, and all five hit it instantly, creating a large explosion of color.

Twilight gulped.

She instantly began teleporting around the place, constantly firing magic blasts at the clones, but never managing to hit one before another destroyed the blast. In the meantime, the air all around her seem to be coated in energy blasts from the Kameks, and she wasn't sure if she could last much longer. In a flash of inspiration, she released a magic spark into the air, which exploded into a beam of light that blinded all five Kameks. While they couldn't see, she teleported behind them and threw a shield over each one. They all recovered in seconds.

"It's over," she announced. "You can't cast magic in there, and you can't move. Now go back to where you came from."

"Hah, fat chance!" shouted the original, blue Kamek. To Twilight's surprise, he produced a large, vacuum-cleaner-like object, and proceeded to suck up the barrier with it. The other clones were all doing the same. Then she was suddenly hit by a blast. And then another. And then another. She couldn't move, she could hardly think, and she was being pelted with dozens of blasts of powerful magic at once. She was knocked every which way and felt her body being bruised and torn up. A fierce look settled into her eyes. 

With a shout of "Enough!" she suddenly repelled every magic blast with an enormous wave of magical energy, and entrapped the Kameks with a spell that prevented them from moving. Quickly, before her energy was sapped, she launched blasts of counter-spells at each clone, with each one vanishing after a single shot. She then teleported both herself and the real Kamek several miles away into a mountainous range, where nobody could get hurt, and as her hold on him began to dissipate, she managed to slam him into a mountain hard enough to make a small crater in it. Ignoring his shouts and cries, she charged up a powerful blast of Alicorn magic, forming a large ball filled with it atop her horn, and launched it at Kamek. The ball drove Kamek deeper and deeper until he was in the middle of the mountain. Twilight let loose her hold and instantly raised up all the pieces of the mountain that had broken off, filling up the hole and sealing Kamek inside it. She turned around and sighed. "It's done." 

But it wasn't. Magic began emanating around the mountain, and in seconds Twilight saw a hand that was bigger than her whole body break through. As the rock crumbled around him, a mountain-sized Kamek reveal himself.

"I've still got tricks up my sleeve, Princess!" 

Twilight panicked. She launched another blinding spark and activated her magical camouflage before he could see again. He wouldn't be able to see or track her. She might get lucky and be able to find a way to reverse this transformation before her stamina ran out.

Kamek chuckled. She thought her magic kept her safe from his seeing her. He could just let her think that and then hit her with a surprise attack, but then he wouldn't be able to taunt her. And he really liked to taunt. So, instead, he looked right where she was hiding at. "Hey, telepath here. You think I need to see you to know where you are?" He lifted his wand and struck her with a blow from it, forcing her out of the camouflage and to the ground. She groaned, stood up, and cast a magical effect on herself - likely a healing spell of sorts. He grinned. "So, Princess of Friendship, I wonder how you'll do without your magic?" He pulled out his vacuum cleaner, now enlarged, and charged it up. He saw her fly up and attempted to move out of the way of the oncoming suction - but it was for naught. His precognition had already told him that she would do just that. He fired it up, and enveloped Twilight in the enormous suction power of the machine. She screamed in agony as color, magic, and happiness flew out of her, and then it ended. There she was, gray, unemotional, near-lifeless. He laughed. "Eheeheehee! This was even easier than I thought it would be!" 

She closed her eyes and landed on the ground. She inhaled, exhaled, clearly trying to figure out why she was even fighting in the first place. Kamek laughed again. It was liberating, to see this creature helpless before him. But then, suddenly, somehow, her horn glowed with magic. Kamek started. "What are you doing? How-" 

As the magic glowed brighter, color returned to her. She turned around and faced him.

"That's impossible!" Kamek shouted, angrily. His voice shook the mountains, since he was, well, the size of one. Yet Twilight did not move. "I drained every bit of magic inside of you!" 

"No, you didn't." She spoke softly. "Even though I couldn't feel anything, I still knew what had happened. My memories…they're really what I am. Everything I knew and remembered about my friends, and how they've helped me become who I am, and how much they've done for me…you drained the outside magic, but you can't drain a bond like that." 

"What do you mean, 'outside magic'?" Kamek shouted. "I drained all your magic! All the friendship in the world can't fix that!"

"Friendship _is_ magic, the most powerful kind," Twilight explained. "When I defeated Nightmare Moon, Tirek, everyone else, my friends were right there beside me, like they always have been. That's what gives me the strength to keep fighting, and the magic to win."

"They aren't here now," Kamek scoffed, "which means you can't win." 

"No," replied Twilight, eyes darkening. "It means that I have to win, so that they never have to worry about you or anyone else hurting them." She suddenly hit Kamek with a powerful blast of counter-magic. He screamed in pain and surprise as he shrunk down to his normal size. Not wasting a second, Twilight teleported a book in front of her, and hit Kamek with a blast of magic, turning him into an illustration in the book. Another spell, and the book caught on fire. Right before the book was engulfed in flames, Kamek appeared outside of it, badly burned.

"You…paperized me," he said, shocked. He didn't get the chance to say anything else, as Twilight was suddenly there and kicked him in the chest, knocking him to the ground, wheezing. He got up and launched himself at Twilight, hoping to catch her and pin her with his martial arts in order to hit her with a magical finisher, but she turned intangible, and Kamek's body went right through her. It hit the ground and rolled. Kamek dropped his wand and struggled in getting up. Twilight hit him with another blast of magic, knocking him back down, and then summoned a half a dozen Parasprites around his wand. Seeing it as food, the Parasprites had eaten the entire wand in two seconds, and Twilight forced them all to vanish again before they began multiplying. She stepped toward Kamek. 

Kamek managed to stand. He needed that healing spell right now. He held out his hand to summon his wand, but, to his shock, it didn't appear. "My wand…what did you do to it?!" 

"The same thing I'm about to do to you," Twilight replied. She touched Kamek's head with her horn. "I'm making sure you can never hurt anyone, ever again."

There was a burst of magic, and Kamek cried out, then toppled over, exhausted.

Twilight backed away. "I'm sorry. I had to do it."

Kamek pulled himself to his knees.

And laughed.

"You tried to take away my magic. But you, of all people, should know that it takes more than a spell to do that." He held out his hand, and then his broom was in it. "And we magicians always have a contingency, just in case." He held out the broom toward Twilight, and suddenly, her horn vanished. 

Twilight's eyes widened. She tried to cast a spell, but couldn't. "What- how-" 

"I told you," Kamek replied, "I'm the master of magicks."

Twilight jumped into the air and tried to fly away, but chains suddenly wrapped themselves around her wings, chains that were far stronger than normal. She couldn't break through them. Suddenly, she was afraid. She turned to run. She ran, and ran, and then Kamek was in front of her.

"Leaving so soon?"

As he charged up and launched a blast, Twilight tried to dodge, but couldn't. The blast hit it with more power than she had ever felt, with the possible exception of Tirek. But she had no magic to save her this time, and she went flying thousands of feet through the air. Then Kamek was there, and he hit her with another blast, one that sent her back down to earth with so much force if formed an enormous crater. Kamek appeared next to her. 

Twilight tried to get up, but couldn't. It all hurt too much, and she couldn't do anything about it. As Kamek approached her, she gasped "No. You can't. I can't let you hurt my friends!" 

Kamek gave her an malicious grin. "Don't worry. You'll be seeing them soon." He waved his wand, and then Twilight was no longer there. In her place was a purple egg with indigo spots. Kamek calmly reached down, picked up the egg, and crushed it with one hand.

 **-KO!-**

Kamek wiped his hand off on his cloak. He glanced at his broom. It should leave him with enough magic for now, but he'd have to make another magic wand if he wanted to do any invading. He set his broom in mid-air, jumped onto it, and opened up the wormhole again. 

Looking at the bits of eggshell that were all that remained of Twilight, he muttered "One princess down, one to go."

…

Well, that was an EGGSellent fight. Fine, you can kill me.

Both Twilight and Kamek were master magicians and had some pretty amazing physical feats, but Kamek just had the edge in pretty much every category. While much of their magic and weapons countered each other's, for example, Kamek's Paperize spell and Twilight's Illustration spell, Kamek's Time Machine and Twilight's Time spell, among many others, and Twilight did have more spells to pick from, Kamek's spells were much more useful in a battle situation. Cloning yourself tends to be more helpful than restoring happy memories, and full elemental manipulation far outclasses any elemental magic Twilight can perform. His healing spell is far superior, and he can summon entire armies of koopas, dry bones, shy guys, and the like with ease, rather than a few simple animals and materials. In most other cases as well, Kamek's spells just go a step beyond what Twilight's do. Not to mention that Kamek has mastered every one of his spells, while Twilight still struggles with fixing ancient artifacts. Twilight's magical power can compete with the likes of Queen Chrysalis and Starlight Glimmer, who are very powerful magical creatures who could cast spells that technically affected kingdoms, but Kamek's magical prowess has held its own against foes that are at least planetary in level. Heck, he put up a good fight against Dreamy Luigi, who can move stars with ease. The only beings with that kind of power in Equestria are Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Discord, and Chrysalis after absorbing enough love to satiate a kingdom. The only one of these Twilight has competed with without outside help that essentially gives you a free win would be Chrysalis, but even then she's only done so when Chrysalis was love-starved, and therefore even weaker than normal, or when a power-increasing comet is in orbit.

Kamek's magical power was more than enough to match Twilight's, and while he had wards that prevented her from, say, turning him into a frog, using the "Want it, Need it" spell to drive him insane, or taking away his magical abilities, Twilight had nothing of the sort. In fact, her magical abilities and control over her own body and magic pool has been tampered with several times in the past. If an untrained Starlight Glimmer can do it, there's really no reason to say that Kamek couldn't. Kamek also has the edge in both experience and combat skill, as well. While Twilight rarely looks for a fight and almost never wins in one-on-one confrontations without outside help or extensive preparation beforehand, Kamek has led entire armies and been fighting powerful beings for over two hundred years. He's even tutored Bowser in martial arts, turning him into a fantastic boxer, while Twilight has had no training aside from her magical prowess whatsoever. Twilight's magic is tied to her stamina, but Kamek's isn't, allowing him to cast spells just as well as before even if he's near-death, while a single good blow can dampen Twilight's magical abilities. Kamek easily outlasts her in potency because of this. Twilight has cast spells that typically encompass a city block at most, while Kamek has cast spells on entire armies. Twilight can hold Kamek still for a short while, but it drains her energy quickly, and she's never shown to be able to do anything but walk a few steps when she does hold others still, and he's fought foes that can stop time before. Plus, his immediate precognition gives him an enormous leg up in knowing exactly what Twilight will do half the time. Twilight's magic barrier may be tough, but it has been broken before, and has never faced anything like Kamek's blasts that sent Mario flying across galaxies. And, while Twilight's counter-spells could reverse Kamek's magic, each spell has to be specifically prepared and cast according to the nature of the spell in question. For an especially advanced spell, doing this can take Twilight hours, which is time she doesn't have against Kamek. Not to mention that Kamek also can counter her spells, and his counter-spells have no such need to be attuned. Twilight's magical arsenal just doesn't stand up to Kamek's.

Even when looking at physical feats exclusively, Kamek takes the cake. Let's take a look at some of each of their best physical feats: In terms of strength, Twilight was able to easily pull a giant chariot made of solid gold. By measuring its dimensions in comparison to Twilight herself, and high-balling it so that only 40% of the chariot would be considered hollow, when it's likely around 65%, this means it weighed around 47 tons. However, she pulled this alongside Princess Cadence. Ignoring the fact that Cadence has previously shown to be more powerful, magically and physically, than her, we can half that number to say that Twilight was pulling along around 23 and a half tons. Impressive, but not as impressive as what Kamek has done. By measuring the enormous hammer he used in Yoshi's New Island in comparison to him, and low-balling it to assume it's made of wood rather than one of the heavy, magic-absorbing metals commonly found throughout the Mushroom Kingdom, it still comes out to be just under 39 tons, giving Kamek a decisive edge in the Strength competition. As for speed, one of Twilight's best feats of speed was when she flew in front of a powerful magic blast by Starlight and blocked it to prevent it from hitting some ponies behind her. Based off some simple calculations given magic blasts from other episodes, similar blasts throughout the show are shown to move at around 100 feet per second. Assuming the ponies she saved were a mere four feet away from Starlight, which, considering Twilight's length, should be way, way closer than they actually were, she must have recognized the attack, landed, and thrown up her shield in less than 0.04 seconds. However, Kamek still beats this, as he's dodged lightning bolts. The lower region of the speed of a lightning bolt is about 220,000 MPH. If Kamek was 2000 feet away, even though he was clearly shown to be much closer, he would still have had to recognize the bolt and move out of the way in 0.006 seconds, a little under ten times faster than Twilight. And that's assuming Starlight even fired the blast before Twilight put up the barrier, which is debatable. Even in durability, or rather, especially in durability, Kamek just blows Twilight out of the water. Twilight was hit by a falling grand piano and got up without major injuries. Judging from the fact that the largest grand pianos can weigh around 1200 pounds and the height from which the piano fell, even if we really overappreciate this feat and claim that Twilight could tank twenty grand pianos falling on her at once, then she would tank about 96 tons of force. Meanwhile, Kamek easily took a hit from Giant Bowser that sent him flying into lava. According to Mario & Luigi: Dream Team's statistics, Giant Bowser has a little over 9x the strength of normal Bowser. Normal Bowser is canonically stated to be stronger than Mario, who can lift and throw entire castles. But even if we low-ball Mario's strength to one of his lesser feats, Lifting King Bob-omb, the result is more than impressive. Judging by Mario's canonical height and the density of iron (even though the Bob-ombs are likely made of steel, which is actually heavier), King Bob-omb must have weighed a bare minimum of 76 tons. Even if we say Mario's strength is limited to this, even though it seriously isn't, and say that Bowser's strength is equal to Mario's, despite it being canonically more, and we run it through the 9x Giant Bowser multiplier, and if Kamek was hit with half his strength, that's being hit with 342 tons of force right into lava and coming out without a scratch. So, mathematically, Kamek's durability must be at least this much - and again, we're really low-balling it.

To recap:

Strength:

Kamek: 38.88 tons

Twilight: 23.5 tons

Speed:

Kamek: 0.006 Seconds

Twilight: 0.04 Seconds

Durability:  
Kamek: 45 tons  
Twilight: 12 tons

No matter where you look, Kamek beats Twilight physically - and remember that Twilight's feats were all high-balled and Kamek's were low-balled. And this isn't even looking at things like how Kamek has taken hits from beings that can destroy stars or, according to the Mario RPGs, has strength equal to more than half of Bowser's which, properly scaled, means he can hit with a bare minimum of 5,000 tons, and likely much more.

"Oh," you say, "But what about the time Twilight defeated Discord, who can warp reality effortlessly, or the time she was piledrived through mountains and tanked nuclear explosions and defeated people easily capable of moving planets with their mind, or the time she herself moved the sun and moon all over the place telekinetically? Doesn't that stuff put her way above Kamek?" In answer to that, yes, she did accomplish all these things, but by…well, cheating. The only reason she defeated Discord and Nightmare Moon was because of the Elements of Harmony specifically countering their magic and entrapping them, and even then she needed all of her friends with her to use the elements. Her physical feats when fighting Tirek are very impressive, as was her ability to easily move celestial bodies, but she could only do this during the short time when she held the magic of all four Alicorns in Equestria, which enhanced her magical powers and physical attributes to absurd levels. Without this power, she has never done anything like those feats. As per the rule of a Death Battle that disallows outside help, neither of these circumstances would be allowed to play out in the fight. And, I should mention, Kamek has fought beings capable of doing very similar things before and survived.

This was a good match, but, in the end, Kamek just outclasses Twilight in magical and physical prowess. She had very little chance in the long run, and Kamek had more than enough power to make sure the battle kept going.

Twilight's fate was sealed once the greatest of magikoopas Kamek her.

 **The winner is Kamek.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle… 

A black stick figure runs across a hallway, dodging gunfire, before jumping off a wall and knocking out a guard behind him.

VS.

An orange stick figure runs across the screen, dodging blows from a cursor, before jumping off a wall, tying the cursor to the top, and shooting it.

(Henry Stickmin vs. The Second Coming)

 **EDIT 7/7/17: Some Fixes:**

 **I just re-released this chapter with some minor fixes and a little more polish. Here's what you can expect that's different:**

 ***The title is now italicized, matching the other two battles**

 ***Several typos fixed**

 ***Some grammar mistakes fixed**

 ***Sentences were rearranged, improving the flow of the battle in general**

 ***Certain words that were supposed to be italicized or put in bold that were accidentally left normal have been fixed**

 ***Some slight number adjustments have been made to the physical feats in regards to updated material**

 ***Previously, the fanfiction would glitch and cause some paragraphs to run together or be spaced too far away. Some spacing adjustments should have fixed this.**

 ***Height now also shown in centimeters, and weight now also shown in kilograms**

 ***A few additional feats and weaknesses were added to Twilight's analysis, though they ultimately don't matter in regards to the battle**

 ***More detail was added in the portion of the Post-Battle Analysis in which I judged Twilight's strength. Some people have questioned me about how that big of a chariot could only weigh that much. I added the process I used to arrive at that number for clarification. Trust me, she was lifting a little over 23 tons.**

 ***I incorporated both Twilight's and Kamek's new durability numbers into the Post-Battle Analysis, rather than talking about them in an edited correction. The "note" that was mentioned in Henry Stickmin vs. The Second Coming has now been deleted.**

 **Thank you for reading!**


	4. Henry Stickmin vs The Second Coming

**NOTE: I made a mistake in the calculations of Twilight's durability in the previous episode. I have included a note in the end section of that episode describing it in detail, along with information about how it would have affected the fight.**

 **I hope you enjoy this episode; I worked surprisingly hard on it. This was originally supposed to be a much later episode, but I decided to write it now in celebration of the new Henry Stickmin game coming out and the soon-to-be-released Animation vs. Youtube. Thank you to those who have followed this story - I'm pretty surprised you can even stand the flaws in it. Now, please, continue reading.**

 _Episode 3: Henry Stickmin (Henry Stickmin) vs. The Second Coming (Animator vs. Animation)_

Before writing, there were drawings, and the earliest drawings portrayed man as little more than a circle and a few lines. Somehow, these stick figures stuck around in internet animation, and today we pit two of the most popular, and most powerful, against one another. Henry Stickmin, the Pure-Blooded Thief, and The Second Coming, slayer of the Animator.

It should be noted that I'm using all of Henry's items throughout his games, but I am excluding the ones he just found laying around. Clearly, he didn't carry these on him, and so they shouldn't be in the fight. Similarly, while The Second Coming will be allowed use of the Minecraft Block, he will only be allowed to use items that can be found or created in a normal Minecraft world, for fairness' sake. In addition, while Monster Spawners and Dragon Eggs are not contained in PC Minecraft's Creative Mode, they are included in the Mobile Edition's Creative Mode. Since, in _Animation vs. Minecraft_ , the Red Stick Figure uses the block to create Monster Spawners, it's clear that this is the version they're using, even though it was taken from a PC Computer. As such, these items will be included.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor and skills to find out who might win a Death Battle.

 **Henry Stickmin:**

In the world of stick figures, one criminal mastermind stands out above all. But, before he was the self-proclaimed Pure-Blooded Thief, he was Henry Stickmin, a man who just wanted to rob a bank. When things didn't work out, he was forced to escape the prison he'd been sent to and remained elusive, always looking for the next big thing to steal in order to make a name for himself. And get rich. Luckily, he has all the tools he needs on him at all times. During his first attempt at thievery, he only brought six tools, and vowed to never be underprepared again, so now he takes one of the largest and most absurd arsenals in the history of ever with him wherever he goes.

He carries a large amount of various pieces of weaponry, including swords, shields, lances, maces, rifles, handguns, throwing stars, tranquilizer darts, and even a wrecking ball at all times, along with lots of explosives, like Sticky Grenades, TNT, C4, Banana Bombs, and the like. But that isn't even a quarter of the things he has under his belt. He has a surprising number of high-tech gadgets, like a teleporter that sends him anywhere, from a couple feet away to another planet, a liquidfier, which turns him into liquid, a clawpack, a shrink ray, an anti-gravity cap that doesn't turn off, two kinds of bubble shields (one that moves but only lasts a few seconds and one that doesn't but remains forever), and even Wallace & Gromit's Techno Trousers. Jumble Hoppers let him jump as high as a building, the Shadozer turns him into a shadow (though he'll die if the sun or moon is blocked), and the Gravitor 2.0 can change the gravity of other objects.

I'm just getting started. Many of his weapons come straight from other video games, like Mario's Super Leaf, which allows him to fly and perform a spin attack, Sonic's shoes, which give him speed comparable to Sonic, who has moved at speeds faster than light, though he's terrible at controlling it, an Item Block from Mario Kart, Kirby's Warp Star, Ness's Yo-Yo, a Spring from the Sonic Universe, The Longshot, a Koopa Shell, and Link's Wind Waker, which he can perform spells with, including the command melody, which temporarily takes control over a feeble mind. And let's not forget both a portal gun, which, well, creates portals from one place to another, and the gravity gun, which attracts and launches non-living matter.

Not to mention he also has an abundance of items that affect him directly, like a sandwich that basically turns him into the Hulk for a few seconds, an Invisibility Pill that makes him unseeable and unable to see, Stretch Chewies that let him stretch out his limbs like rubber, a cookie that increases his size to building-level, an adrenaline shot that refills his energy and increases his speed but impairs his judgement, and a can of beans, which makes him release a fart so powerful, it outruns a closing door. I am not making this up.

And he still has more up his sleeve! The Transdimensionalizer changes the fabric of reality to adjust what dimension everything exists in, his Metal Fists can dent steel, his Plunger Boots are so sticky they're nearly impossible to get off the ground, the Jet Boots can fly for about two seconds, this weird glue lets him scale walls, he has a bottle of acid, expanding foam, a magnet so strong it attracts entire airships, a laser drill, a Magic Pencil that brings anything it draws to life (too bad he's a terrible artist), and a Joy Buzzer so powerful, it interrupted power to the entirety of the same airship.

As if that wasn't enough, he also has a ridiculous amount of none-special items that are applicable in other situations, like a penny, a shovel, a balloon, parachute, tool gun, giant vacuum cleaner, glider, umbrella, whoopee cushion, and a wire that can lift over two tons.

When he wants to get around quickly, and there aren't any trucks to steal, he uses one of his favorite vehicles, like the Rocket Scooter, which comes with an attachable tow cable and basket and can outrun patrol cars. His other option is the government-created Cannon Ball, a giant Hamsterball made of bulletproof plastic that moves at high speeds. It's equipped with a huge laser cannon, two thrusters for flight, and can even turn into a spiked ball for extra defense, though enough force will still break it.

But when things get really tough, he breaks out his ultimate weapon. Straight out of Fallout, the T-45 Power Armor is a highly maneuverable piece of technology with super strength and absurd durability, tanking both lasers and bullets without breaking a sweat.

Of course, none of this would matter if his skills weren't up to par. Thankfully, they, too, seem to go into the realm of absurd. He's fast enough to run on walls, strong enough to lift a diamond that would weigh well over 2 Tons, and shrugged off an explosion from a Creeper that sent him through a concrete wall. Oh yeah, and he's magic.

Somehow, Henry has these Psychic Abilities that allow him to do some pretty crazy things. His power jump sends him dozens of feet into the air, he can steal everything there is to steal off a guard without him noticing, can cast reflecting spells, use Zero-Point Energy, teleport short distances, though his body can barely handle it, and create and manipulate both fire and ice, though he seriously lacks control over either of them. He's a skilled swordsman and martial artist, taking out professionally trained guards in one-on-one battles, and can somehow both Earthbend _and_ Metalbend. His Earthbending skills aren't half bad, and he once Metalbended an airship's propeller into stalling, albeit unintentionally. With his "The Knee" ability, he can hit someone with his knee and cause them to actually explode, though he can only do this when under extreme duress and can't control it well. He also has some kind of Dimensional Storage ability, which is how he can store a thousand different items on him and pull any of them out at any time. He's also a quick thinker, able to come up with the best-case scenarios at any given moment almost immediately and judge exactly what he must do in order to have a chance of surviving any situation.

With such a huge arsenal and impressive skill set, Henry has accomplished a lot over the years. He's stolen the Tunisian Diamond, become the leader of the dangerous Toppat Clan, escaped from a supposedly inescapable Russian complex (and brought hundreds of other criminals with him), and was recruited by the government to help take down other dangerous criminals. He survived falling from a building that was at least 38 stories high, dodged steady streams of gunfire with nothing but his acrobatic skills, and once dodged every bullet from an AK-47, caught one in his hand, and flicked it back hard enough to break the gun into two pieces. The average speed of an AK-42 round is over twenty-three hundred feet per second, and from some less-than-simple calculations, I've found that he must have thrown the bullet back with nearly six tons of force in order to break the gun. That's power.

Of course, all these abilities and items wouldn't amount to much if he weren't able to use them, and…he can't. For having survived some pretty crazy things, he's actually quite fragile in most situations. His head, in particular, is vulnerable, and though he can dodge bullets frequently, one shot will put him down. He's easily distracted, egotistical, obsessed with money, and incredibly clumsy. He's made a ridiculous amount of rash and thoughtless decisions, and, despite owning dozens of pieces of incredible technology, can hardly use any of them properly. He's more liable to end up stuck in a wall when using the teleporter than anything else. He can't control the Warp Star, or most of his other speedy items. Despite having several guns, he's a horrible shot. He once fired every round from a machine gun at a guard literally inches away and somehow missed every time. Honestly, he's only even made it this far due to his surprising luck. Karma is very real to him; when he makes a stupid decision, he has bad luck, and when he makes a smart one, he has surprisingly good luck. Though this has led to him getting captured at least three times by three separate organizations, it has also led to him escaping these organizations better off than he once was.

In any case, he consistently finds himself in hundreds of situations where there is only one possible chance for survival, but he always manages to find it and take it. Henry Stickmin is a criminal to be feared. Until you see him slip on a banana peel. Feel free to laugh then.

 _Henry bends himself backwards, dodging constant bullets, before plucking one out of the air and launching it back at the guard, breaking his gun. The guards begin to shake in fear, and when Henry makes a fake shooting motion at one, he drops his gun. Henry walks out of the prison without interference._

 **Henry Stickmin:**

Name: Henry Stickmin

Species: Stick Figure

Age: 23

Height: 6 ft / 183 cm

Weight: 110 lbs / 50 kg

Occupation: Bounty Hunter, Private Investigator, Government Operative, Rescue Operative, Toppat Clan Leader, Criminal, Fugitive, others

Karma loves to pick on him

Likes brown shoes

Obsessed with money

 **Items/Weapons:**

A Shovel  
Sticky Grenades

Grenades

C4

TNT

Banana Bombs

Lots of Explosives

Laser Drill

Wrecking Ball (w/ Crane)

Teleporter

Bank Bag

Mace (Iron)

Lance (Iron)

Shield (Iron)

Sword

Rocket Scooter (w/ Basket & Tow Cable)

Bubble Shield (Moves w/ him, Lasts 3 Seconds)

Bubble Shield (Stationary, lasts forever)

Sniper Rifle

Jumble Hoppers

Anti-Gravity Cap (Can't turn off)

Liquidifier

Shrink Ray

Gravitor 2.0

Adrenaline Shot

Wind Waker

Whoopee Cushion

Spring

Longshot (Only hooks onto Wooden Objects & Enemies)

Balloon

Plunger Boots

Shadozer

Super Leaf

Speed Shoes

Tool Gun

Item Block

Sandwich

Handgun

Parachute

Warp Star

Cookie

Sonic Pulse

Tranquilizer Gun

Invisibility Pill

A Penny

Portal Gun

Wire

Hammer

Bottle of Acid

Giant Vacuum

Transdimensionalizer

Glue

Throwing Star

Stick with Spider

Cannon Ball

Metal Fists

Beans

Techno Trousers

Rocket Launcher

Chainsaw

Yo-Yo

Multi-Bottle Rocket

Jet Boots

Glider

Joy Buzzer

Expanding Foam

Stretch Chewies

Magic Pencil

Paperizor

Clawpack

Gravity Gun

Shrink'n'Grow

Koopa Shell

Umbrella

T-45 Power Armor

 **Abilities:**

Can Teleport short distances (though he can't always handle the stress)

Can Power Jump, jumping dozens of feet in the air

Dodged Gunfire w/ acrobatics

Some PSI Abilities

The Knee

Can Cast a Reflecting Spell

Skilled Swordsman

Master Pickpocket

Knows some Martial Arts (Pretty good at replicating Captain Falcon)

Create and manipulate fire (Rarely works)

Zero-Point Energy

Create and Manipulate Ice (Rarely works)

Quick Thinker (Able to judge all his options and which one leaves him alive)

Earthbending (He's actually pretty good)

Metalbending (doesn't always turn out well…)

 **Feats:**

Survived a fall from at least 38 Floors

Caught an AK-47's Bullet (2350 F/S)

Fast enough to shortly run on walls

Escaped from Prison

Infiltrated the Toppat Clan

Escaped a supposedly inescapable complex

Stole the Tunisian Diamond

Lifted Tunisian Diamond (Weighed 4205.68 lb or over 2 Tons)

Shrugged off an explosion that sent him through a concrete wall

Threw the bullet of an AK-47 hard enough to split the gun in half.

 **Weaknesses:**

Horrible Shot

Clumsy

Terrible Luck

Easily Distracted

Egotistical

Often Rash & Thoughtless

Been Captured at least three times

Owns many objects, but can hardly use them

…

 **The Second Coming:**

In the world of stick figures, one powerful martial artist stands out above all. But, before he was the slayer of the Animator, he was The Chosen One, an animation who just wanted to destroy everything. After being brought to life, The Chosen One did his best to fulfill the one goal in life he'd been given (utter destruction of the computer), was captured by Anti-Virus software, escaped, and succeeded in his goal at last. And then his Animator got a new computer and he destroyed that one, too. After that day, the Animator swore to never again create another Chosen One, leaving it and its memory trapped in the old computer forever - or so he thought. The soul and power of The Chosen One lived on, and found itself embedded in a new form, the orange stick figure known as The Second Coming.

Trained by his four best friends (who also happen to be master martial artists) he's one of the best stick-figure fighters out there, easily taking down other masters in seconds and killing several monsters in a single heartbeat. He technically only wields one weapon, but it's one of the most powerful and versatile weapons out there: The Minecraft Block. This block contains the very essence of Minecraft's creative mode, and thus can be used to spawn a nigh-infinite amount of any of the hundreds of items in the Minecraft World.

This includes full sets of Diamond and Iron Armor. These armor sets provide a magical effect that increase the wearer's durability by incredible amounts - at full strength, the Diamond Armor set nearly doubles TSC (which is how I'll be referring to The Second Coming from here on out)'s durability. But armor isn't all that's made of diamonds. The Diamond Sword is one of the sharpest blades ever forged, and can slice through metal and foes alike as if they were butter. And while the Diamond Axe and Hoe are supposed to be used for cutting down trees and farming, respectively, you can imagine what they do to their enemies. Then, there's perhaps his best diamond-forged tool, the Diamond Pickaxe, a tool specifically made for breaking through that which is unbreakable. Be it metal, mineral, stone, magical, or even alive, the Diamond Pickaxe will smash it to pieces in seconds.

Speaking of things to break, any block in the Minecraft world is TSC's to build with. Wood blocks, Cobblestone, Diamond, Gold, Hellstone, even Obsidian, one of the strongest blocks in all of Minecraft, are all accessible and easy to build giant structures with - like a giant unkillable robot, a self-propelling windmill, or just a simple cabin, all built in seconds. If you think that's the limit of what's contained in this weapon of infinite capabilities, stop being so cute. TNT blocks destroy anything within a five-to-ten meter radius and with redstone he can set up wiring systems in his structures, setting up crazy things like devices that can make real-life phone calls or chat on Skype. His Bow shoots arrows with enough power to break through diamond, and he can even adjust Dispensers to act like arrow-machine guns.

He also can spawn any potion he needs, such as the Potion of Healing, which, well, heals him. Potions of Strength, Swiftness, and Regeneration increase his Strength, Speed, and Stamina, respectively. The Potion of Invisibility turns his whole body invisible, though it doesn't affect armor, the Potion of Night Vision lets him see underwater and in the dark, and the Potion of Fire Resistance makes him immune to being burned. He has a lot of other potions, too, like Potions of Water-Breathing and such, but most others aren't very helpful in battle, so we can skip them. But, of course, we can't forget his splash potions, which are throwable potions with volatile mixtures inside that affect all beings in the area. His two best splash potions are his Potion of Poison, which poisons all those exposed for several minutes, and the Potion of Harming, which is kinda like another, more powerful TNT block that only affects living matter.

He has an assortment of other items of varying usefulness, as well, like Milk Buckets, which heal him of status effects. The Fishing Rod has an unbreakable line and catches fish quite well, but he usually uses it as a powerful grappling hook. He can form high-speed Minecarts and tracks for the minecart to run on, Torches to light up dark areas, Pistons for working with machines or providing a high-powered punch, an Enchantment Table with books to make his weapons and armor even more powerful, a surprisingly durable shield to block blows, and the Enchanted Golden Apples, which heal him completely in just a few seconds and provide a myriad of powerful buffs.

But perhaps most importantly, he can create spawners of various enemies, summoning entire armies of former foes to defeat his opponents. Zombies are slow, but steady and tough. They are, by far, the most common enemies, but are far from the best. Skeleton Archers are terrible in close-quarters combat, but excel from a distance, where they launch arrow after arrow at their enemies. Creepers have no weapons or combat potential, but are far more…direct. They just walk up to the person they hate the most and explode! At point-blank, a creeper explosion will kill virtually any normal Minecraftian, regardless of armor. Blazes are made of fire and shoot fast-flying fireballs. Silverfish burrow through solid stone and do small amounts of very fast damage, and finally, Cave Spiders are man-sized spiders that launch themselves at foes and bite them, poisoning them in the process. The only problems with these spawners are that the enemy has to be within 16 meters in order for the monsters to spawn, and the spawners themselves are easily breakable and will stop creating monsters if broken.

Still, this is ignoring the block's two most powerful creations. With the Dragon Egg, it will spawn none other that the Ender Dragon, one of the most powerful beings in all of Minecraftdom, and by placing three Wither Skulls on a structure of Soul Sand, the Wither is formed, an exploding, incredibly deadly monster that is essentially Minecraft's version of Satan. Though each boss can only be summoned once, it's essentially a guaranteed win after that, so it doesn't often matter. Now, there's a ton more to the Minecraft Block, but really, we've covered pretty much everything useful in a battle, so there's no sense in going over the rest.

Of course, as powerful and versatile as this block is, it wouldn't be much if TSC's physical feats couldn't hold water - but they can. In fact, the vast majority of what TSC has done, he's done without the Minecraft Block. Because he's a remnant of The Chosen One's power, he still holds his original strength, speed, and durability. He's fast enough to run on walls, strong enough to lift and place a block that's literally a cubic meter of pure gold, and tanked being smashed into by several cars and trucks in a row. Oh, and he has powers.

In addition to his absurd physical feats, he can pick up any martial art just by studying it in action for a few seconds, which is how he became one of the greatest martial art-performing stick figures ever and a master swordsman. More interestingly, he can use tools from drawing programs and draw objects and creatures which will then actually come to life and serve him. His force of will is nigh-indomitable, pushing him to the point where he wasn't able to be deleted by Windows Task Manager and survived several blows from an obsidian giant that should have killed him with ease. His greatest asset, however, is his creativity and ability to use the environment around him to his advantage - like creating a laser gun out of random bits and pieces of loading bars scattered around or hiding in the thumbnails of apps. His powers he currently has actually come from his original form, The Chosen One, and, in fact, it's implied that, under too much pressure or anger, he can actually transform back into The Chosen One. Okay, well, it's not, like, _heavily_ implied, more like _barely_ implied, but I want The Chosen One in this fight and if you were taking this whole thing incredibly seriously, you're doing it wrong.

The Chosen One is an incredible power of pure destructive force. In addition to strength that shatters metal and a skill set to match the best martial artist out there, he has a host of new powers - like his Heat Vision, which can burn through nearly anything, outmatch other apps and icons with the ability, and leaves everything it touches in flames. He can create explosions spontaneously, fly, breathe fire, and has full control over the elements. He can create and manipulate enormous walls of fire, freeze other beings solid with a casual wave of the hand, even Firefox, which is a fox made up of, well, fire, create earthquakes with a stomp, and spin around, manipulating the air around him to form a vortex akin to a Black Hole. If this seems overly powerful, well, it is. We are talking about a stick figure who killed the Omniscient AOL Messenger program by picking up its own program window, which was around 100x his size, and smashing it into the icon's stomach. He's defeated nearly all the computer's icons at once, and held his own and even won against Clippy, a shapeshifting, invincible paper clip, and The Dark Lord, who was specifically created by the Animator to kill The Chosen One. However, as The Chosen One, he gains all this power but loses The Second Coming's humanity and mental prowess, meaning a clever opponent can set up a trap for him and contain and perhaps even kill him, much like the Animator initially did, and he can revert to The Second Coming's form if he takes too much of a beating. Still, that's a small price to pay for this much power.

But even without The Chosen One form or the Minecraft Block, The Second Coming has accomplished a surprising amount. He's tanked Creeper explosions, dodged high-velocity bullets, and defeated four martial arts masters in five seconds. He's killed Herobrine, fought the epitome of Youtube, and concocted a plan that defeated an enormous Obsidian Giant piloted by a stick figure with the Minecraft Block (yes, the very one with so much power that we spent five paragraphs on it) in his possession with nothing but a few sticks, fishing rods, and saplings - a.k.a. the most useless things in all of Minecraft. He's avoided lasers, matched and surpassed the strength of his friends, who held back the afore-mentioned giant with nothing but a fishing pole, and even temporarily killed the Animator. Or, well, at least his cursor, which is still more than The Chosen One could do without outside help. However, there is one accomplishment he is the most proud of - one thing his predecessor, The Chosen One, could never have done, even with outside help: He actually made friends with the Animator and ended up becoming an Animator himself, helping produce fantastic animations for the world to see and bringing other creatures to life with his power.

With all these weapons and items and with that much power, The Second Coming really seems unstoppable - but he isn't. He's been defeated before, and nearly killed on more than one occasion. He often over-relies on his friends to pull him out when things get tricky and to have his back in battle, and, as such, is consistently open to counterattacks and hits from behind. He'll jump into battle without a second thought, regardless of what he's up against, and he can easily lose himself in rage or become obsessed with a single goal, ignoring all else in order to achieve that goal. He also has great trouble when surrounded on all sides by foes, as he's unable to predict when and how the next attack will come. In addition, while the Minecraft Block is absurdly powerful, if it is destroyed or placed inside the Recycling Bin, anything and everything it created will be destroyed instantly.

In any case, he always find himself facing the most powerful and wackiest of foes, and always manages to come out on top. There are few who have gone up against The Second Coming and lived to tell the tale. Do not underestimate this three-meter tall orange child's drawing.

 _The Second Coming knocks on the side of an open computer window as if it's a door and waves to the three stick figures within. They cheer, and one rushes to open up the window to him. He enters as another stick figure opens a door inside the window and comes out. They all trade high-fives and hugs before entering their own corners and getting into fighting stances. All four launch themselves at The Second Coming, only to each be defeated in a couple of hits. Lying on the ground, all four raise their hands and begin clapping for their friend, who raises his arms in victory._

 **The Second Coming:**

Name: The Second Coming

Species: Stick Figure

Age: 3

Height: Varies/Typically 9'10" (300 cm)

Weight: N/A

Occupation: Co-Animator

Excellent tactician

Reincarnation of The Chosen One

Speaks through text

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Master Martial Artist/Swordsman

Creates Objects by Drawing Them

 _\- The Chosen One:_

Elemental Manipulation

Heat Vision

Flight

Create Explosions

Fire Breath

 **Items/Weapons:  
** _\- Minecraft Creative Block:_

Diamond Stuff (Full Armor, Sword, Pickaxe, Axe, Hoe…)

Iron Stuff (Full Armor, Sword, Pickaxe, Axe, Hoe…)

TNT

Water Blocks

Obsidian, Sand, Cobblestone, Gold, Hellstone, and like 100 more blocks

Spawners (Skeletons, Zombies, Creepers, Blazes…)

Golden Apples

Bow & Arrows

Dart Trap

Minecart & Tracks

Torches

Fishing Rod

Redstone

Enchantment Table

Books

Shield

Dragon Egg

Soul Sand

Wither Skull

Potion of Healing II

Potion of Strength

Potion of Swiftness

Potion of Regeneration

Potion of Invisibility

Potion of Night Vision

Potion of Fire Resistance

Potion of Poison

Potion of Harming II

Zombie Spawner

Skeleton Spawner

Creeper Spawner

Blaze Spawner

Silverfish Spawner

Cave Spider Spawner

Lots More

 **Feats:**

Killed Herobrine

Temporarily defeated the Animator

Destroyed an Obsidian Giant with useless materials

Built towers and houses in seconds

Figured out how to make everything in Minecraft in seconds

Run over by cars, trucks, trains, still got up fighting

Defeated four master martial artists in seconds

Survived Windows Task Manager

Was smashed through walls dozens of time, should've died, but survived

Tanked the explosion of a Creeper

 _-The Chosen One:_

Escaped Anti-Virus software

Defeated all desktop icons at once

Defeated Clippy

Defeated The Dark Lord

Created a Black Hole - twice

Destroyed the Computer - twice

 **Weaknesses:**

Too reliant on friends

The Chosen One loses himself in rage

Jumps headfirst into battle

Obsessive

Doesn't do well when surrounded

Defeated by the Animator twice

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all. Probably. It's time for a Death Battle!

…

TSC (The Second Coming) blocked another blow from one of his friends - the four were inside their website house, competing against him for the third time in as many days. As the red stick figure launched himself at him, TSC whirled around, grabbing his arms and flinging him into two of the others. All three fell down. The yellow one, the only one still standing, suddenly jumped down from above, trying to land on and pin him, but TSC stepped out of the way and kicked the yellow stick figure back into the air. He slipped into another tab accidentally, and TSC jumped into the tab to follow him. Upon landing, he saw an odd picture - inside the tab, another stick figure, this one black, was charging at two other stick figures, one black with a stubble who was evidently holding another with pink hair hostage. As TSC watched, the first Stick Figure hit both of the others with a single knee, throwing them far back and forcing them both to explode in a flash of color. Instantly, TSC jumped up and down in excitement. Maybe now he could finally fight someone with power like his! He waved off the Yellow Figure, who quickly understood and retreated back to his own flash window home. TSC ran over to the flash window containing this new person and opened up the side.

Henry blinked and raised his arm behind his head. He let out a nervous grin. He hadn't expected it to go like that. Well, at least the-

Suddenly, an orange Stick Figure with no face appeared out of absolutely nowhere, grabbed Henry, and pulled him out into what appeared to be another dimension. Henry slid out of TSC's grip and jumped up, shocked. From here, he could see the entire yard of the complex he had just been escaping from. It was contained in some kind of a window, and there was a piece missing off the side. That must have been how this person had brought him here. But that didn't really matter; he just had to get back and make sure Ellie was all right. He ran toward the open side, only to be halted in his tracks when the orange figure appeared in front of him and pulled down a black bar, sealing the hole. The figure began to make several motions with his hands - he wanted to indicate something. Henry shook his head to show he didn't understand. TSC lowered his head, jumped down and opened up another computer window, this one showcasing a painting program. Henry was surprised - could this being just shape reality to his whim or open up new worlds effortlessly? No, he decided. It must be the place he was in - something like a hallway between realities. Of course, Henry had no way of knowing he was on a computer.

TSC jumped into the paint program's main sheet, and orange words appeared above him. "LET'S FIGHT!"

Henry scratched his chin and jumped into the same sheet. He thought of the words he wanted to say, and, surprisingly, they appeared above him. "NO."

"WHY NOT?"

"YOU KIDNAPPED ME!"

"I JUST WANT TO SEE WHO'S STRONGER. IF YOU WIN, YOU CAN GO BACK."

Henry considered this. If this orange person was the only one who could return him home, he'd have to agree. Better a possibility of going back than a guaranteed no.

"OKAY."

"JUST A MOMENT." The figure said. "I'LL BRING UP EVEN GROUND." He jumped down to a grayish bar and tapped an icon of sorts, which brought up a word processor. He jumped into it and motioned for Henry to do the same. Henry jumped in, and they posed, ready to fight.

 **-FIGHT!-**

TSC launched the first punch, but before it connected, Henry had summoned a large mace and slammed it into TSC's stomach, sending him flying back and crashing into the bottom scrolling bar. Henry switched to his lance and held it out as he dove at TSC. TSC rolled out of the way moments before the lance could hit him, and the lance snapped the scrolling bar in half. Thinking quickly, TSC immediately picked up the half on his side, snapped it into two pieces on his knee, and held them out, wielding them like dual swords. Henry pulled his lance out of the bottom of the screen and swung with it. TSC ducked under the blow and pushed it back with his scrolling-bar swords. He launched a barrage of attacks with them, which Henry kept trying to deflect with his lance. But a lance is not a good defensive weapon, and TSC quickly knocked it out of his hands. With a jump and a kick, he sent it flying into the air and back down, aiming to skewer Henry, who managed to flip out of the way.

 _He's trying to kill me!_ Henry thought. _What about the idea of a friendly competition?!_ Henry had no idea that, to TSC, this _was_ a friendly competition, and his competitions with his friends usually including such life-threatening instances. _Well, if that's how he's playing it…_

TSC kicked down, swords aiming for Henry, but Henry jumped onto the once-again stuck lance and up into the air, meeting TSC as he fell. With a powerful uppercut, Henry sent TSC flying into the back wall and caused him to drop his swords. Henry activator his Gravitor right away, grabbing TSC, sending him out, and back in. Out, and back in, and then he tossed him high into the air with it, grabbed his gravity as he was about to fall, and forced him to slam down directly where he was - right into the dozens of grenades, banana bombs, TNT, C4, and other explosives Henry had put there, waiting for him. TSC looked around once, shocked - and then it all exploded.

Then the dust cleared to reveal TSC surrounded by obsidian blocks and completely unharmed. Revealing the Minecraft Block, TSC destroyed the obsidian instantly and threw out a fast and powerful line of cobblestone blocks at Henry. They smashed into him, crushing the Gravitor and pinning him against the wall. Henry quickly dug into his storage and threw out several more bombs to give him an opening - but TSC simply scrolled through his inventory and threw up several TNT Blocks. The explosives all detonated in the air, harming neither combatant.

Then Henry suddenly punched the air in a straight, outward motion - and the cobblestone trapping him flew out and shattered into hundreds of pieces. Another movement, and the whole line had shattered. With a few more direct movements, the pieces all began flying toward TSC. TSC immediately surrounded himself in more cobblestone to protect him, but in moments, they, too, had shattered and joined the rest. The hundreds of slivers of stone tore through TSC's stick body several times, causing him to fall back in pain. Henry commanded the slivers to all rise above TSC and rain down on him at once, finishing him off. As they fell, though, TSC suddenly rose and pulled out a diamond pickaxe. With sudden dexterity and agility, he jumped through the air and swung the pickaxe, each swipe obliterating over a dozen slivers. In five seconds, he'd taken care of them all. He took out a potion of some kind and drank it, turning him invisible.

Not to be outdone, Henry quickly swallowed a pill which also turned him invisible - but rather than an awesome invisible fight, all it really led to were two invisible stick figures bumbling around, trying desperately to find where the other person was until the effect wore off. The moment it did, TSC grabbed a Diamond Sword. Seeing this, Henry took out his own steel blade. The two ran at each other and swung - and Henry found his sword sliced cleanly in half. Seeing TSC making another swing, he brought out his mace once more, ready to smash into him with it - only for it to be sliced in half, as well. Well, maybe a hammer would - nope, sliced in half, too. Then TSC finally got a hit with the Diamond Sword in, knocking back Henry and leaving him gasping. That was an incredibly powerful sword - he couldn't afford to be hit again.

TSC swung again, expecting this to be the last swing of the fight. But, before it connected, someway, somehow, Henry turned into a shadow. As a shadow, he moved behind TSC and then regained his normal form. Then TSC saw the device in his hands. Another strange item that let this person do incredible things. Where did he keep getting them? TSC was interrupted mid-thought, however, when he was struck in the back by Henry wearing what appeared to be enormous, and powerful, TSC thought to himself while rubbing his back, iron gauntlets. Then, without warning, Henry was behind him and struck again. Henry jumped into the air and landed right behind TSC once more. Before TSC had enough time to recover from the second blow, Henry was there with a fully-loaded machine gun - and shooting. All TSC could do was duck and pray.

Thirty seconds later, Henry ran out of bullets, and TSC looked up. Amazingly, he believed, he hadn't been touched by a single bullet, despite being two inches away from the gun's barrel. Just to test that he was still alive, TSC reach out and knocked over Henry, who was apparently just as shocked as he was. Henry fell to the ground, which was a good sign. TSC decided to take advantage of the opportunity. He reached up and prepared to plunge his sword into Henry - but Henry suddenly brought a giant shield out of nowhere. The sword went through the shield, but it halted the momentum of the blade, allowing Henry to pull back and snap the sword out of his grasp. Henry rolled away and stood up, taking the captured diamond sword as his own, holding it in one hand and his shield in the other. TSC simply pulled another Diamond Sword and his own Shield from the Block, and held them similarly. The two ran at each other and clashed blades.

They fought evenly for a while, but it was clear that TSC was the better swordsman. Henry needed to mix it up if he wanted to win this fight. He forced TSC's sword back with his own, pushed TSC's shield off his, and equipped his metal fists. He threw a punch and connected with TSC's shield, and then used his metalbending to create a giant spike protruding out of the fist. The spike tore through the shield and ripped it in half. TSC, not wanting to give any advantage, jumped up and grabbed Henry's neck in a scissor lock. A quick pull, and he was on the ground, Metal Fists off his hands. A few slices from the diamond sword and the fists were no more. Henry knocked TSC off of him with a kick to the head and trapped him in a heap of expanding, hardening foam - but that was hardly enough to contain him. TSC gathered his strength and tore loose from the foam and swung a decisive blow at Henry. Desperate, Henry pointed at him and entrapped TSC in an area of zero-point energy. Henry breathed a sigh of relief - before realizing that, somehow, TSC was still moving - albeit more slowly. TSC managed to break free of the Zero-Point Energy field and finished his decisive blow - but Henry wasn't there. In an act of panic, Henry had managed to teleport himself several yards behind TSC, though it left him weakened and reeling.

TSC brought out a bow and several stacks of arrows and began firing. Henry managed to recover in time and threw out his own shurikens, throwing stars, and throwing knives, each one perfectly matching and knocking down the arrows fired. TSC brought out a Dispenser and filled it with arrows, sending hundreds flying at Henry in five seconds. Henry simply put up his reflecting spell and sent out arrows back at TSC, who placed several obsidian blocks in front of him to block the arrows. TSC destroyed the blocks and summoned a Potion of Swiftness and drank it at the same moment Henry injected himself with a personalized Adrenaline shot. The two launched themselves at each other, Diamond Swords swinging, and clashed at hypersonic speeds. They jumped from place to place, block to block, wall to wall, each perfectly matching the other's newly-increased speed.

Realizing he needed more, TSC summoned and drank up a Potion of Strength. The next time they clashed blows, TSC grabbed Henry's head and slammed it in the side of the program window, then pulled it out and knee-dropped him to the ground. Henry got up woozy. TSC's strength was too much - he needed to match it. As TSC landed heavily next to him and threw a punch, Henry matched it with his own hand carrying his Joy Buzzer. TSC was wracked with electricity for a few seconds, giving Henry enough time to find and swallow a Sandwich. He suddenly grew twice as big with muscles that looked like enough to smash a building to pieces. TSC somewhat recovered and threw a punch, but Henry matched it with ease. Henry then piledrived TSC into the ground and, using his now-wearing off super speed, dragged TSC around the floor, his head being smashed through all sorts of materials. He finally lifted up TSC and raised his knee, and then slammed TSC's back down onto it - before realizing that his Hulk mode had worn off. Both of them collapsed in great pain. TSC shakily got up and ate an Enchanted Golden Apple to restore his energy, and then took the few extra seconds he had to finally equip himself in a full set of diamond armor.

Now, with TSC ready to impale him and his own blade nowhere in sight, Henry desperately reached down, hoping to grab something to help him - and unwittingly opened Microsoft Paint back up. TSC's blade was caught on some of the previously-spoken words and flew out of his hands. Realizing his advantage here, TSC jumped on top of the afore-mentioned words and grabbed the paintbrush out of the drawing options tab. He used the tool to draw a giant boulder over Henry's head, which immediately came to life and began to fall. Henry ducked out of the way just in time, and, realizing this place was basically one giant canvas, brought out his Magic Pencil. TSC drew a pair of wings behind him, allowing him to fly. Henry tried to do the same - but they ended up looking more like frogs than wings, and suddenly there was a small army of frogs hopping around. He tried drawing a gun…and it turned into a sweater. Deciding his Magic Pencil was basically useless, and why would he draw a gun when he had a dozen of them with him at all times, he just brought out his sniper rifle and unleashed a shot at TSC - which was quickly intercepted by a line of paint. He took out his rocket launcher and launched three missiles instead, but then TSC just made three lines of paint, one for each missile to smash into. TSC surrounded himself in an evidently impossible-to-break-into wall of paint and began work on the biggest gun ever seen. It only took him about fifteen seconds, but in that time, Henry had already tried to break through with several of his weapons and items and failed. As soon as TSC was done with it, he used the eraser to wipe away the paint and pointed the gun at Henry - only to be struck in the stomach by a Koopa Shell and knocked down, wings lost. Henry grabbed his magic pencil and used it to make platforms (at least that was something he could do), which he used to reach up to the gun. After a quick prayer he threw out his hands - and a huge bout of fire flew out of them and wiped away the paint effortlessly.

Both Henry and TSC were amazed, but decided quickly they couldn't afford to think about this spectacle. Henry equipped Sonic's Shoes and suddenly ran at TSC at speeds faster than light - only to smash right into an unbreakable wall of obsidian TSC had put in front of him moments before. Pressing his advantage, TSC reached down and minimized the Paint program, causing both of them to finally end up on the desktop, and created several monster spawners. They each began spawning monsters right away, and, when he finally turned around, Henry was faced with dozens of monsters to deal with after the whole headache he had just gone through. He grabbed ahold of and used the Item Block and received…a banana peel. Well, chainsaw it was. With a powerful _vroom!_ his chainsaw started up and began mercilessly mowing through zombies and creepers with ease - until he was shot half a dozen times by skeleton archers and around eight cave spiders jumped onto him. Freaking out, Henry reach into his arsenal for anything that would help - and found the Warp Star. Suddenly he was out of the pile of monsters and flying around the place like a maniac, holding on for dear life as the Warp Star crashed right into TSC, throwing both of them to the ground and, unfortunately, causing TSC to drop the Dragon Egg he was holding.

Out of nowhere, a giant purple and black dragon that filled a quarter of the screen appeared. In one breath it annihilated all the monsters and spawners in the vicinity. TSC cowered. Realizing just how big of a threat this creature was, Henry pulled out his Shrink Ray, and, just as the Ender Dragon was about to fire at him, shot it. The dragon suddenly became the size of an ant and about as threatening as such. Henry killed it by merely stepping on it. Seeing this, TSC noticed that this gun Henry was holding was a little too powerful for his liking. TSC stood up and delivered a solid punch to Henry's face, knocking him back and sending the Shrink Ray flying. It was then a simple matter to catch the Shrink Ray and shoot it at Henry. But Henry quickly recovered and put up a reflecting spell, sending the ray back at the gun. The gun shrunk, fell out of TSC's hands, and broke on the Taskbar.

For the first time, Henry took actual notice of where he was. To his astonishment, he suddenly realized the he was, in fact, inside a computer. If that were true, then he could just reopen the page that had allowed him to escape here and return home that way. Well, if he took care of this guy first. Speaking of which, he watched as TSC created a massive, screen-sized stick figure out of Obsidian blocks and gulped. He eyed the block the diamond-clad figure was holding as TSC took out of it a new Diamond Sword. All the stuff he had made…all his power had come from that block. He needed to get rid of it. If he could do that, this fight would be over.

But, for now, he had to deal with this thing. He tried the Super Leaf, and flew up to the head of the giant - only to be smacked down again and lose his ability. Well, choice No. 2, then. Henry took out and ate a cookie with blue frosting, which caused him to shoot up in size until he was as big as the behemoth he was facing. He launched a punch, but it was met and countered by the giant. The giant hit him with an incredible amount of force - if he were smaller and weaker, he may be dead. He tried to twist the giant's arm back, but it didn't move. He tried earthbending and metalbending, but it didn't move. Then it did move - it landed two powerful uppercuts in his face, sending him to the floor. He got up and continued fighting for a while, but it was clear he was outclassed. Eventually, the cookie wore off and he was stuck in his small form, facing a giant too tall for words. He threw up a bubble shield to protect him and buy him some time. Try as he might, he couldn't think of something left in his arsenal that could handle a giant like this, except maybe-

He didn't have to continue his thought, because evidently TSC wanted to make sure he had victory in hand. He placed four Soul Sand on the ground in an odd shape, and placed three Black Skulls on top of it. Then, with a huge explosion, a incredibly scare, satanic life-form was created. It instantly began launching skulls at Henry - skulls that bounced right off the Bubble Shield. It was a very powerful monster- which was a good thing for Henry. He took out the Wind Waker and quickly performed the Command Melody. Now, just like that, the Wither was his to control - its single desire to kill all that lives perfectly weakened its mind enough to be susceptible to the song. Henry commanded it to attack the goliath, and it did. While the skulls didn't do much, incredibly, whenever it touched a block on the giant, the block was obliterated. TSC quickly replaced these blocks, but still…Henry got an idea. He told the Wither to simply jump into the structure and try to kill the orange stick figure. It did, and, as the obsidian crumbled, Henry used the Gravity Gun, summoning and breaking apart all remaining obsidian. As the ground beneath him fell apart, TSC let go of the Minecraft Block and tried to hold his own against the Wither. That was all Henry needed. He took out the Portal Gun, shot a portal above the recycling bin, and shot a portal underneath the Block. In a split second, the Block was gone, the obsidian fell to pieces, which then ceased to exist, TSC's armor and sword vanished, and with one mighty explosion that sent TSC to his knees, the Wither was gone as well.

Henry sighed in relief. Finally, it was over.

Then TSC began to vibrate, appearing for split seconds as no longer orange, but black. No longer short and thick, but tall and thin. And then, with a mighty glow and shout, it became reality. The Second Coming was no more - and The Chosen One had risen again.

Suddenly, Henry was being smashed into walls, icons, anything and everything on the screen. The Chosen One threw him into the back wall and shot out powerful lasers from his eyes at him while still floating. Henry put up his reflecting spell, but it was no use - it shook and cracked, and then it broke. Henry was too tired to compensate for that much energy. He dropped to the taskbar, barely avoiding the laser blasts, and summoned his Rocket Scooter- which was promptly destroyed. Clicking his tongue and dodging another blast, he now summoned the Cannon Ball, which he entered immediately. Using the rockets, he flew up with it to meet The Chosen One in the air. The Chosen One cause an enormous explosion near it, which sent the ball flying, and then smashed into it with a powerful punch that cracked the plastic. Surprised, Henry charged up the powerful laser cannon and fired. The Chosen One met this with his own laser vision. The two beams struggled for a good long while before the Cannon Ball ran out of energy. Henry immediately activated the defensive mode, wrapping the whole thing up in a metal exterior with lots of spikes. This didn't seem to bother The Chosen One, though, and he merely picked up the Cannon Ball like it was a paperweight and went to town on it, throwing it everywhere, smashing it into all kinds of things, and finally just grabbing the metal coating himself and tearing it to pieces. Henry ejected before he could be killed. There was only one way to survive now. He had to use his ultimate weapon - the T-45 Power Armor.

As the blackish-grayish armor equipped itself, The Chosen One flew at Henry and launched a powerful punch - only for it to be intercepted and replaced by a metal fist flying at his face. The hit from the armor hurt a surprising amount and threw The Chosen One all the way to the other side of the screen. He wanted to end this as soon as possible. He shot his laser vision at the Armor-Clad Henry, only for it to simple bounce off the armor. He raised his hand and grew a column of fire that filled half the screen, and sent it all hurtling toward Henry. But he appeared to be completely safe in that armor, and it didn't even have a scratch on it afterward. Then Henry attacked, and The Chosen One was surprised at how well the armor kept up. It seemed to match him blow-for-blow in places - but he still had the upper hand. He held a significantly higher amount of skill in hand-to hand combat, and he still had powers. Speaking of which, he flew backwards and thrust his hands forward, shooting out a large batch of powerful frost magic. Though he tried to escape, Henry was quickly frozen in ice, Power Armor and all. The Chosen One quickly grabbed the Henry-sicle, brought him to the top of the screen, and threw him down with all his might. The taskbar snapped in half, and the ice around Henry shattered, taking his armor with it. The Chosen One flew down, all ready to finish him off- and then he was suddenly grabbed by a grappling hook of sorts and thrust into the broken taskbar next to Henry, who jumped, grabbed onto an icon, and began throwing things. What things, The Chosen One wasn't sure - but it was evidently ALL the things. Every single item that could be of any help in killing him - Grenades, Sonic Weapons, an entire Wrecking Ball set (including truck)…everything.

And then it all hit him.

The Chosen one shouted and screamed. It hurt too much for words, and he was fading…slipping back into his inferior side. No, not after finally coming back! It couldn't end like this!

But, nonetheless, when everything was cleared. All that was left was a half-dead orange stick figure, The Second Coming. Henry jumped back onto the taskbar and ran up to him. One more move and he'd be gone - forever. He sent out his leg, performing his best "The Knee" he could.

Then TSC jumped out of the way.

Henry realized too late he'd been tricked - he was heading for, with no way to stop himself, the very portal he had sent the Minecraft Block into. He shouted in shock and he fell into the Recycling Bin, whereupon TSC simply jumped up to the bin, tapped it, and selected a single option.

"Empty."

 **-KO!-**

The Second Coming fell back to the taskbar, completely spent. Well, he wasn't wrong when he had thought this guy would give him a fight. He looked around. The desktop was an absolute wreck. He'd have a lot of explaining to do when the Animator came home.

…

Remember kids; recycling is one of life's most important lessons!

Both Stick Figures were powerful with vast arsenals, but there were some clear-cut advantages. Henry's arsenal may have been larger in regards to useful items and he has more experience in using his, but TSC's arsenal held more powerful and viable tools and a near-infinite amount of each. A TNT block alone easily matches and surpasses any of Henry's explosives, and the Diamond Sword cuts through his melee weapons with ease. Henry was forced to rely on his more off-beat and high-tech items from the start, which gives him a disadvantage, since he can't use these nearly as well as he can anything basic. While many of his stranger items are more powerful than anything the Minecraft Block can make, such as Magic Pencil, the Warp Star, and the Transdimensionalizer, he has clearly shown his inability to use many of them with any degree of success. That, combined with things like constant Golden Apples healing any damage TSC would take and his spawners vomiting out monsters to take the punishment for him, meant TSC could, for a good long while, easily compete with and counter Henry's arsenal with the Minecraft Block alone. It should be noted, though, that, because of Henry's incredible judgment abilities, he would eventually see the Minecraft Block itself as a threat and endeavor to get rid of it, which at some point, he likely would be able to do. True, he could steal it with his fantastic thiefing skills, but Henry has also shown a complete inability to properly use virtually any newly-acquired item correctly. He generally ends up killing himself more often than not. Besides that, TSC has beaten a stick figure wielding that Block before with nothing but the barest of items. And though it would inevitably end up destroyed or thrown into the recycling bin, that wouldn't likely happen until late in the fight, as Henry has never been able to plan ahead but instead goes by the seat of his pants all the time. This gives TSC plenty of time to whittle down Henry's arsenal, and he could easily handle whatever few items remained afterward. And while Henry could Earthbend and Metalbend some of the objects created with the block, the majority he couldn't. Overall, both arsenals were pretty much on even ground, and countered each other quite effectively. The only problem is that, without his arsenal being a huge factor, Henry always comes up short.

TSC has never needed the Minecraft Block to accomplish his most impressive feats, but Henry is reliant on his arsenal to a fault. This is clearly shown when comparing their physical accomplishments: In Strength, Henry snapped an AK-47's bullet back with enough force to break the gun in half - or about 5.8 tons of force. TSC, meanwhile, easily lifts and handles entire blocks of gold, each of which would weigh 17.3 tons. But that's nowhere near his limit - he's shattered steel with his bare hands and outmatched his Stick Figure friends that held back a obsidian giant that must have weighed an absolute minimum of 149 tons, clearly putting him way ahead of Henry here. For Speed, Henry caught the previously-mentioned bullet in the first place. Considering he was a good 27 feet away and an AK-47 shoots with a rate of 2350 f/s, he must have seen the bullet coming and plucked it out of the air in 0.012 seconds. However, The Chosen One dodged a high-velocity shotgun bullet from a similar distance - and these bullets travel at 1220 m/s. This means that he had to recognize the bullet and dodge it in less than 0.007 seconds - far faster what Henry did. In Durability, Henry's greatest feat was likely when he fell off the roof of a building at least 38 stories high and survived the landing, which would have hit him with over 40,000 lb of force. However, TSC was smashed into by several cars and trucks going along a freeway and was fine. A two-ton car going at the average highway speed of 60 MPH would have hit him with over 400,000 lb of force - again, well beyond Henry. And he tanked several of these in a row! To top all that off, Henry's physical accomplishments aren't really that consistent. Falling a mere 10 stories has killed him, and even though he caught an AK-47's bullet from a mere 27 feet, he was unable to dodge a pistol's bullet from over 50 feet away, which should have been a cakewalk, all things considered. Meanwhile, TSC's physical feats are all in the same ballpark, with little to no changes throughout.

To recap:

Strength:

Henry: 5.8 tons

TSC: 149 tons

Speed:

Henry: 0.012 seconds

TSC: 0.007 seconds

Durability:

Henry: 41,200 lb

TSC: 481,708 lb

Yeah, Henry stood no chance in physical prowess.

And, as The Chosen One, his powers absolutely destroyed Henry's. The only place Henry can claim superiority here is possibly in Earthbending, but other than that…Henry struggles to light his hand on fire without burning himself up, and The Chosen One manipulates screens filled with flames with ease. Henry can jump dozens of feet after some seconds of charging, and The Chosen One can fly effortlessly. Henry can use Zero-Point Energy (though both TSC and TCO had been trapped similarly before and escaped), and The Chosen One can make black holes. You tell me who has the edge here. Not even Fallout's Power Armor can match up to The Chosen One's power.

The Second Coming has a number of other advantages. He's smooth and precise, and Henry is clumsy. He's able to lay out complex plans to win out over far superior opponents in mere seconds, and Henry struggles to find his best option at every single point. His force of will allows him to keep fighting much longer than Henry could, and he can draw and create anything he needs at any point. Henry can do this, too, with the Magic Pencil, but he's such a terrible artist it barely matters. Henry has enough skill in martial arts to defeat a trained guard in one-on-one combat, but The Second Coming can defeat martial art masters in just a couple of blows.

"Oh, but," you say, "Henry is able to see his best scenarios at any point and take the path that will let him survive. Doesn't that mean The Second Coming can never kill him?" Well, no. Remember, Henry is only able to see and take these options at the moment he needs it most. If he takes too long deciding or acting on his options, he's toast. But besides that, he has gotten to a point before where no amount of good decisions and luck could help him survive on several occasions. To quote the great Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "It's possible to make no mistakes and still lose." Considering The Second Coming had the advantage in nearly every way, it was only a matter of time before he pushed Henry to that same point.

In short, The Second Coming held a huge advantage in physical abilities and skill and held an arsenal that easily matched Henry's. Without it being there to get him out of tough spots, Henry ran out of options very quickly.

It seems that this time, poor Henry won't be getting a Second Coming.

 **The winner is The Second Coming.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle… 

A brown-haired young man, writing in a notebook, declares "I AM JUSTICE!"

VS.

A black-haired young man, eyes turning red and bird-like, declares "I AM JUSTICE!"

(Light Yagami vs. Lelouch Vi Brittania)


	5. Light Yagami vs Lelouch Vi Brittania

_Episode 4: Light Yagami (Death Note) vs. Lelouch Vi Brittania (Code Geass)_

Throughout history, one clear question has remained without an answer: Brain or Brawn? Well, these two anime antiheroes use their otherworldly powers to prove that with enough brain, you need no brawn to be successful. Light Yagami, the mass murderer Kira, and Lelouch Vi Britannia, the masked insurrectionist Zero. I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who might win a Death Battle.

For clarification, only the main manga and anime versions of these two characters will be used. No live-action adaptations or questionably-canon side stories allowed.

There will be a couple instances of minor swearing during the course of this battle. While I try to avoid swearing in my stories in general, this battle is a far more personal and story-driven battle than the other ones, and both characters are known to become emotionally invested in battles of mental prowess, and will often curse when things don't go their way. It's perfectly in character for them to swear, so I couldn't see a way to avoid it without altering their personalities. I apologize if this offends anyone.

Also, holy crap is this a long one. The whole chapter is over 17,500 words long - that's around 7,000 more words than the last battle (enough to fill two to three normal book chapters). The battle feels far more like a fanfiction or story than anything else. Do not expect a fight this long ever again. This battle was very unique. Very. If you don't want to read through the whole story, just read the analysis, last couple paragraphs of the battle (before it says **KO!** ) and post-battle conclusions. Also, much like the last episode, this was supposed to be written later, but was written and released early in celebration of the new Death Note movie and Code Geass Season. And by celebration, I mean "hopes that they won't suck."

Now, let's do this.

 **Light Yagami:**

Light Yagami is… a physically unimposing foe. Though he was once one of the better tennis players in the world, his strength and durability is average, at best, with his most intimidating feature being somewhat-above average height and incredible attractiveness. But hiding underneath this mask of normalcy lies one of the deadliest criminals to ever exist.

Despite doing quite well in his studies and connected in every right way to achieve his dream of becoming a police officer like his father, Light was bored with his life. He found no challenges worthy of his incredible intellect, and the world held too much crime and evil to even be worth living in. But this changed during his twelfth year in grade school, when he encountered the shinigami, or god of death, Ryuk, and, more importantly, the otherworldly weapon known as the Death Note. Barring an enormous number of fairly unimportant rules, the Death Note works as follows: Light writes the name of an individual inside of it, and forty seconds later they suffer a fatal heart attack. Believing nobody else would be suited with both mind and morality to use the notebook properly, Light took it upon himself to rid the world of evil through vigorous use of the Death Note. He would then create a new world free of corruption, where he would rule as God.

However, the Japanese Police and Government recognized his attacks as though he was a murderer, and formed a team specifically focused on stopping the killings of Light, who now went by the persona of "Kira." Leading the charge against Kira was none other than the world's best detective and Light's future best friend and rival, L. Since Light had to know L's name and face in order to kill him with the Death Note, and L had to make 100% sure, with proof, that Light was Kira before arresting him, this pit the two against each other as rivals in a high-stakes game of mental chess. For every move one made, the other countered it perfectly. Needless to say, the Death Note was an invaluable tool in Light's campaign against L.

A Death Note is a shinigami's tool for killing those in the human world, and has sixty-six pages of rules to go along with it. However, most of these rules are rather specific (e.g. A person over 124 cannot be killed by the Death Note) and bore little meaning when Light used it. The most important rules are these: The human whose name is written in the book will die; the writer must write the name of the individual they wish to kill while imagining their face; once a name is written, the person will die and cannot be saved; a cause and time of death may be written, but it must be a viable one and can only occur within 23 days; the person who will die may be controlled by the Death Note up to 6 minutes and 40 seconds before their death (though they cannot do anything that would normally be impossible for them); and that if the owner is killed or gives up the notebook willingly, the next human to touch it becomes the owner. Obviously, this is a very powerful tool, and, with its infinite pages, it was what Light used to kill the vast majority of people during his crusade. And along with the Death Note came a companion: The shinigami Ryuk.

As per the rules of the Death Note, Ryuk, as the former owner of the notebook, must remain at Light's side at virtually all times. He watches everything unfold, and, when it is time for Light to die, he must write down Light's name in his own Death Note. You may think that having a giant scary god of death follow you around would be a dead giveaway that you're Kira, but luckily Ryuk cannot be seen or interacted with by anyone except those who have touched Light's Death Note. He'll phase right through most physical objects and creatures. As the world's only expert on the notebook, he'll occasionally offer Light advice and clarification to make things more interesting, though he is under no obligation to do so. He can also make a deal with Light, trading half of Light's remaining lifespan for shinigami eyes, which can be used to see a person's true name just by looking at their face. However, it should be noted that Light has refused this offer at every point he was given it, believing the price to be too high for what, for him, was just saving a little extra work. Ryuk also likes apples as much as hippies like drugs. So that's a thing.

Light carries two very basic weapons with him at all times. The first is a standard-issue .38 caliber revolver, as used by Japanese law enforcement. While it's technically illegal for him to have it, as he's not a police officer, it's saved his life before, and also he's kind of a mass murderer, so he doesn't really care. The second is a small piece of the Death Note hidden inside his watch. By clicking the knob that sets the watch a certain number of times in rapid succession, it pops open and reveals the corner of a Death Note page, which he will use to kill people in a hurry if his gun is lost and his plan goes astray - which, luckily for him, it rarely does.

With the Death Note in hand alongside his massive intellect, Light has accomplished a lot without the need for any physical feats. Within a few weeks of receiving the notebook, he was already famous worldwide. He's successfully predicted the movements of normal citizens, police officers, special detectives, FBI Agents, and entire government organizations over the course of days, weeks, even months, down to the letter, within a day or so each. He's always one step ahead of everyone else, doing things like walking in crowds if somebody who can see Ryuk is nearby, so that they don't know who he belongs to. He's hacked into government databases, orchestrated the deaths of some of the world's most influential and/or powerful people without suspicion, and even joined the very anti-Kira team that was focused on finding him. He even was eventually able to manipulate his surroundings to, after several months, kill his rival L, supposedly winning the day. Leading the investigation into false leads, he was able to spend the next several years as Kira without any suspicion, even while working with many of the best detectives in the world. He eventually came absurdly close to achieving ultimate power, and taking over the whole world - but he never did.

Unfortunately, Light has a few flaws that were heavily exploited by those who suspected he was Kira, and were ultimately his undoing. His sense of morality, in particular, is very skewered and has only become worse as long as he has used the Death Note. This has led to him making several reckless kills and almost exposing himself during multiple instances. His ego is absurdly huge. He truly believes he is a god and treats everyone else like dirt when he can afford to, which, again, has cast suspicion over him many times. If someone were to threaten his ego, he becomes far more susceptible to potential traps and will do whatever it takes to end that individual. When he becomes enraged, he goes into a bloodlust where he recklessly tries to kill anyone and destroy anything - though while in this state of mind, he was able to throw a person across a room and take multiple bullets to the chest and still stand. He's also been outsmarted by L and a number of other people several times. And, at the end, he was trapped and killed by Near, the successor to L, Light's former friend and rival. Though there are those out there in our world who can't accept this death. There's even an online fan theory about Light never really dying, but instead becoming a shinigami.

Despite his flaws, Light is a serial killer with one of the most dangerous weapons of all time and a mind to match. Kira is not a person anyone would want to cross.

 _As Near finishes relaying exactly how he had discovered and proven Light's identity as Kira, he shouts out "Let's see you talk your way out of this one!"_

 _There's a moment of silence, and then Light begins to chuckle. The chuckle turns into a laugh, and the laugh into an exposure of maliciousness that stuns everyone in the room. After a good thirty seconds of terrible laughter, Light settles down and speaks five words._

"It's true. I am Kira."

 **Light Yagami:**

Name: Light Yagami

Alias: Kira

Species: Human

Age: 23

Height: 5' 10"/179 cm

Weight: 119 lb./54 kg

Occupation: Detective

Blood Type: A

Will be played by edgy teen in upcoming movie

Best Quote (?): "I was making babies…with the pope."

 **Abilities:**

Athlete-level physical shape

One of the best minds the world has ever seen

When bloodlusted, can throw a man across a room or tank bullets

 **Items/Weapons:  
** Death Note

Watch with piece of Death Note

.38 caliber revolver handgun

 **Feats:**

Defeated an enormous range of people with mental prowess alone

Killed an even bigger number of criminals

Fooled L for months

Fooled many of the world's best detectives for years

Killed L

Had several countries running scared as Kira

Killed Mello

Threw a man across a room

Took several bullets, still stood

Almost won. Almost.

 **Weaknesses:**

Didn't win.

God complex

Moral scale is…weird. Dangerously weird.

Outsmarted several times

Can become reckless or lazy

Loves to gloat

…

 **Lelouch Vi Brittania**

Lelouch Vi Britannia is…a scrawny, pale-faced stick of a guy with below-average physical abilities who looks like a stray wind could blow him away. His only threatening feature he could boast would be an icy glare or his above-average attractiveness. But be careful; underneath this mask lies one of the most dangerous minds in all of fiction.

Born to Charles and Marianne Vi Brittania, Lelouch was the eleventh prince of the Holy Brittanian Empire. Life was good, until some assassins showed up, killed his mother, and left his sister a cripple when he was only ten. To top it all off, he went to his father and rightfully accused him of not protecting his mother, and his dad responded the only way he knew how: by banishing both Lelouch and his sister Nunnally to Japan. Oh, and Nunnally went blind. Yeah, life wasn't being good to these kids, and it only got worse. In fact, the only reason Lelouch and Nunnally were even still alive were to be used as political pawns with Japan - and then Brittania and Japan went to war and negated that. Brittania won, turning Japan into Area 11, and forcing Lelouch to take himself and Nunnally into hiding before his father could find and kill them. He adopted the last name "Lamperouge," got a job, friends, and a school, and began living a new life. Several years later, he was given an opportunity to take back everything that had been stolen from him when he encountered C.C. (Pronounce that see-too, not see-see. Sorry, pet peeve.), and, more importantly, the power she granted him: The King's Power, Geass. This ability allowed him to control others just by looking at them. He immediately saw the potential in this ability, and decided to use it to get rid of all the corruption in the world, Brittania in particular, in order to provide his sister with a better life.

He then recruited the best and most driven rebel Elevens, or Japanese, into his own organization that fought against terrorists, criminals, and Brittania. Mostly Brittania. He called them the Black Knights, and he was their leader. Hiding under a mask that can somehow take a bullet and not break, along with a kevlar-based suit and cape that's also quite stylish, he calls himself "Zero." Or the Demon. Or the Black Prince. And then there was the time he did that stint as Julius Kingsley- you know what? Let's forget all his other alter egos and just go with Lelouch and Zero. Anyway, Britannia recognized these attacks as terrorism, and so sent out a team of giant Knightmares (which are basically giant robot mechs) to stop Zero and his own team of Knightmares. Leading the charge against Zero was the Lancelot, piloted by Lelouch's best friend and future rival, Suzaku Kuruyugi. The two would battle again and again, with Suzaku's far superior skill doing its best to counter Lelouch's absurd intellect and strategic prowess. However, almost every battle always went Lelouch's way - though he did always seem to find another intellectual equal he had to defeat. Luckily, his Geass really helped him out.

Geass is a special power that can only be granted to individuals by members of the Code, an immortal race of- actually, that's huge and complicated and unnecessary, so let's just skip that. Anyway, all Geass has to do with the mind and altering or affecting the minds of others. Lelouch's Geass can manipulate others' minds to follow Lelouch's commands. It is considered to be the most powerful Geass by many, and is used to its fullest by Lelouch. The Geass can affect others just with eye contact, and will force that person to do whatever it is Lelouch next orders. Immediately after doing so, the person forgets everything that happened before they were brainwashed. Geass will last forever unless it has completed its specific goal, as shown multiple times through the manga. However, the Geass can only be used on somebody once, has a range of 272 meters before it can't be used, and commands must be spoken aloud. In addition, after using the ability far too freely for a long while, Lelouch developed the condition known as "Runaway Geass." Because of this, his Geass is constantly active and will affect anybody who looks at his eyes. Lelouch has special contact lenses to block the Geass, but if they're removed, everyone around him is in danger of being affected. Finally, if the would-be victim is wearing a reflective surface, like glasses, a visor, or a mask, over their eyes, Geass will not go through it and will not work on them. Still, this ability is so incredibly powerful that it's well worth any downside. And along with the Geass came a companion: The Code member C.C.

C.C., being a member of the Code, is immortal and has lived for several centuries. Naturally tired of her immortality and all the pain and sorrow she suffered in her life, she wished to finally die, but she can only be killed by somebody with Geass that is advanced enough to be present in both their eyes. Anything else from anyone else, and she'll just regenerate back. So, after granting Geass to Lelouch, she chose to live in his apartment and wait until his Geass was advanced enough. But things didn't quite work out like that. She began going on missions with the Black Knights, posing as Zero's mistress, when she was instead there to offer advice, both about the attacks and Geass, and take his place when he wasn't available. As they went on missions together, the two actually became good friends, and ended up really caring about each other. And C.C. may or may not have fallen in love with Lelouch - that was never fully specified. Regardless, after Lelouch's Geass advanced to the point where it was in both eyes, he didn't kill her - instead, he ended up saving her life and showing that there might be some things worth living for after all. As a good friend/possible lover of Lelouch, C.C. offers up any advice she can to help him accomplish his goals and will willingly take part in his schemes. She also likes pizza as much as hippies like drugs. So that's a thing.

Aside from his Geass, Lelouch's best weapon is his mind. Oh, and a .40 caliber laser-guided pistol that he's a crack shot with, but mostly his mind. He's outmatched several strategists that should be his intellectual equals, programmed and implemented a countermeasure to an electronic super nuke in nineteen seconds flat, and once saved his sister's life from a mentally unstable Geass user by using his Geass on _himself_ in order to forget certain memories. He lasted more than five seconds in hand-to-hand combat with Suzaku, who could dodge machine-gun bullets and anti-tank fire, destroyed Tokyo, and defeated the world's greatest army with far fewer and less powerful forces several times, even when the opposing army had their own master strategist leading the attack. His plan for the Zero Requiem required the prediction of virtually every government, army, and individual member down to the letter for the next two years (it succeeded, by the way), and he took down a corrupt and brilliant, but insane, powerhouse by making a recording of himself answering every one of the questions the individual would ask, so as to seem like he was on live video when he was really somewhere else. Twice. He was even able to defeat his rival Suzaku on multiple occasions, and, after being betrayed by the Black Knights, manipulating God with his Geass, and killing his father and resurrected mother permanently, he just straight-up took over the entire Brittanian Empire and recruited virtually everyone who once fought against him, including Suzaku. He eventually achieved ultimate power, and took over the whole world - for a few hours.

Lelouch may be incredibly impressive, but he's not exactly flawless. His sociopath tendencies and utter disregard for what innocents get caught up in his plans makes it difficult for people to trust him, giving him less reliable resources. His above-average ego is responsible for at least one or two failures, as he consistently underestimates his opponents. He may be emotionally unstable at times, and he rarely takes enough care to ensure nobody finds out he's Zero, doing things like accidentally leaving his mask out in public or proclaiming C.C. as a friend, while she's known to others as Zero's mistress. His biggest weakness, however, is Nunnally. He will do virtually anything to protect her, and this had led to him making reckless decisions that cost an enormous amount of lives - nearly including his own. And when he believed she was dead, he became incredibly apathetic toward everyone, and lost his ability to care whether or not he lived or died. Which kinda led up to the point where he did eventually die. He was killed by Suzaku, Lelouch's former friend and rival - though it should be noted that this was a part of Lelouch's plan all along, and ended up pretty much causing world peace, so he did, in the end, win. Though there are those out there in our world who can't accept this death. There's even an online fan theory about Lelouch never really dying, but instead becoming a member of the Code.

Despite his flaws, Lelouch is an insurrectionist with one of the most dangerous weapons of all time and a mind to match. Zero is not a person anyone would want to cross.

 _Lelouch hangs up from a friendly conversation with Suzaku, then sits back inside his Knightmare as he watches Tokyo suddenly fold in on itself, killing hundreds, if not thousands. He speaks. "These hands of mine have been dirtied for a long time now, Suzaku. Your coming to face me doesn't matter at all. Hell, I welcome it, even. I mean, of course, you and I are friends."_

 _There's a moment of silence, and then Lelouch begins to chuckle. The chuckle turns into a laugh, and the laugh into an exposure of maliciousness that, had anyone but C.C. been near him, would have stunned them all. After a good thirty seconds of terrible laughter, Lelouch settles down and speaks two words._

" _Now, then."_

 **Lelouch Vi Brittania:**

Name: Lelouch Vi Brittania

Alias: Zero

Species: Human

Age: 18

Height: 5' 10"/178 cm

Weight: 123 lb./56 kg

Occupation: Student

Blood Type: A

Loves chess. Like, a lot.

Best Quote (?): "I'm not mad! I just don't understand your outfit! I don't!"

 **Abilities:**

Passable hand-to-hand combat

One of the best minds the world has ever seen

A great shot with a handgun

 **Items/Weapons:  
** Geass

.40 caliber laser-guided pistol

Kevlar-based costume

 **Feats:**

Defeated an enormous range of people with mental prowess alone

Killed an even bigger number of Brittanians and/or criminals

Fooled the entire world for months, twice

Killed Charles Vi Brittania

Had the world running scared as Zero

Killed Schniezal

Took a bullet, lived

Survived hand-to-hand combat with Suzaku

Destroyed several cities

Defeated several empires

Created his own country

Took over the world

Won

 **Weaknesses:**

Superiority complex

Moral scale is…weird

Outsmarted several times

Too attached to Nunnally

Sociopathic

Loves to gloat

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all! It's time for a Death Battle!

…

The Guren Mk-II smashed through another wave of Brittanian Soldiers and gripped the nearest Knightmare Frame with its right hand. A powerful surge of red energy burst out from the hand, crumpling the opposing Knightmare in seconds. The mech's pilot, Kallen, tapped a button on her earpiece and began to speak. "Okay, Zero, we've cleared the path to the building. What now?"

"Good work," came a slightly modulated voice from the other end. "Go ahead and enter, but make sure not to kill the ambassador. It's very important that we have him alive."

"Understood." Kallen effortlessly broke through the side of the building with just a swipe from the Knightmare's hand.

Zero was watching, as he always was, from a distance. He was standing on the third floor of a recently-abandoned building in full costume, staring out the window, expecting the news of the ambassador's capture at any moment. He had planned this well - it had taken him some weeks to deduce the exact location he would be in, and another week to perfectly plan the attack. This would be an enormous victory for the Black Knights.

Then he heard Kallen's voice in his ear. "Zero!"

"What happened?" he replied in a stern, but determined fashion.

"The ambassador…he's dead!"

Zero's eyebrows rose, though nobody could see this.

"None of us did it, I swear! He was right in front of me, and he just collapsed!"

 _Kira._ The lights suddenly shut off around him, and Zero whipped around.

"Zero," came a modified voice from the darkness.

"Kira," Zero replied. It was obviously he, for who else could have killed the man without lifting a finger when he was surrounded by two small armies? "You killed the ambassador."

"Yes," the voice replied. "He was a criminal of the highest degree, doing nothing lawfully wrong, yet still ruining thousands of lives with every breath. He deserved to die."

"And yet you waited this long to do it?" Zero made sure his voice was smooth as silk. He needed information, but he couldn't give away any of his own.

"I waited to do it in front of you. We're quite like-minded, Zero. Both of us rise above all others, taking out the real terrors of the world that nobody wants to see, and all cloaked in the darkness. If you join me, I may be able to secure you a place in my new world. But, if you don't, you've seen how easily I can end your life."

"You have not studied me as thoroughly as you believe," Zero replied. "The Black Knights stand against all who wish to impose their will upon the less fortunate, not just Brittania. You fit that description better than most, and now you've put yourself in our way. Let me put this bluntly: do not disturb us again, or I will kill you myself." Secretly, he just wanted to get Kira talking more. He almost had a perfect fix on where he was. His hand slowly moved under his cloak and grasped the handle of his pistol.

"You're a fool, Zero," Kira snapped. "You've seen how easily I can end your life."

"You require my name and face to do so, and I have taken care to hide them since I began this crusade."

"And how long will it take me to find your name? How long, Zero, do you think you'll survive before I catch you? Before I kill you?"

"Long enough." Zero threw out his arm, pistol in hand, and fired. There was the sound of a gunshot, and then silence.

Zero walked over to the wall he had aimed for, only to find nothing but a simple highly-sensitive walkie-talkie taped to it, a bullet hole cleanly through the speaker.

Zero put his gun back. He'd been tricked. He couldn't afford to let that happen again. He had to find Kira and kill him.

Before Kira found him.

 **-FIGHT!-**

Light sat back in his chair, smirking. He lowered his own walkie-talkie. "Oh, Zero, you really should have thought about this a little longer. Not that I need you to become God, but you might very well have been a useful stepping stone."

Ryuk was watching from behind him with decided interest. "So, what now, Light?"

"Now?" Light seemed to consider the question ridiculous, as if it had the most obvious answer in the world. "I make good on my threats, Ryuk. Behind every mask is a man, and this man does not have long to live."

"Oh? You mean you know who he is?"

"Not yet." Light smiled in a dangerous way. "Give it three days. If I don't have his name and face within three days, I'll be disappointed in myself."

Ryuk fingered an apple from a basket next to Light before picking it up and taking a bite. "Then," he said between mouthfuls, "where will you start?"

"I should think it would be obvious," Light answered. "There's only one man in this whole country besides me who is capable of figuring out who Zero is. I'd be surprised if he hasn't done so already, just for the hell of it." He scooted his chair back and stood up. "Tomorrow, we're going to pay L a visit."

…

Lelouch opened the door to his apartment, now dressed in his normal student attire. In front of him, he saw Nunnally attempting origami at the table. Interestingly, the figures she was constructing weren't the usual swans or doves, but rather miniature versions of Godzilla, which explained the newly-found trouble she was apparently having with her favorite activity. He took a step forward.

"Hello, Lelouch," Nunnally said happily. She'd memorized the sound of his footstep a long time ago. When they were kids, it was one of the few things she had left in the world.

Lelouch smiled softly. "Hello, Nunnally. Did you have a good day?"

Nunnally nodded, grinning. "Sayoko taught me a new figure! Though," she admitted, "I'm having trouble getting it down."

"I can see that," Lelouch replied lightheartedly. "Where's C.C.?"

"Oh, she's up in your room."

Lelouch nodded, realizing a moment later that his sister couldn't see that, and ran up the stairs to his room. When he opened the door, there was the green-haired girl, eating pizza while lying down on his bed. Upon noticing the door opening, she sat up.

"How did it go?" she sounded somewhat disinterested, but Lelouch had learned that this was just her way of speaking. It meant nothing to how much she actually cared.

He sat down in an armchair. "The mission didn't go through. It was foiled. By Kira."

"Oh?"

"He killed the ambassador before we could reach him, and offered me an ultimatum. I replied in kind."

"And now one of you will be dead within the week, and you want me to help you make sure it's him and not you," C.C. finished.

Lelouch chuckled. "You catch on quickly." He frowned. "I should have made catching Kira a priority the moment he appeared. Now, he runs a great risk of ruining everything. I can't let that happen."

C.C. raised an eyebrow. "I'll follow your lead, Lelouch. Where to first?"

"What better place to start," Lelouch replied, "than with those who have been trying to catch Kira since the beginning?" He smiled. "Tomorrow, we're going to pay L a visit."

…

Light showed up far earlier than usual to the Kira Task Force building. The only ones there were his father, Watari, and L himself. His father, Soichiro, was standing to the side, tapping his foot on the floor, as if he were expecting something. Watari had just entered the elevator, and was apparently leaving to go downstairs. L was in front of their largest monitor, as he always seemed to be. He crouched in his seat, feet firmly planted on the chair, and stared at the screen haggardly. On the monitor, there was a series of seemingly unassociated symbols. Seemingly. Light, however, saw the hidden pattern immediately.

"Hello, Light." L said calmly, eyes never moving from the screen. "You're up early."

Light gave a fake smile. "Couldn't sleep," he replied in apparent admittance. He turned to face his father. "You too, dad?"

"After Kira killed that ambassador," Soichiro acknowledged, "it struck me again just how easy it could be for him to kill any of us. I couldn't find rest when I knew I could be here, doing something to catch him."

"Believe it or not, Mr. Yagami," L spoke in a monotone manner, "you are already helping a great deal just by being here. It is always a comfort to know I'm not alone in this fight."

"Hmm, I just wish I could do more than that," Soichiro replied sullenly.

"Yes, I saw that Kira had killed him on TV last night," Light continued the original conversation, hoping to lead to a certain point. "I'm surprised he would do such a thing when the Black Knights were about to do it for him. It can only lead to more evidence against him."

"There's no evidence to say that the Black Knights ever intended to kill the ambassador," L murmured. "In fact, there's a fair amount of it going against that idea."

Soichiro's head snapped up. "Do you think Zero and Kira are working together? That could explain how Zero rose to power so quickly-"

"No," L interrupted. "It's a possibility, but an incredibly small one. I find it highly unlikely that either Zero or Kira would be able to stand working with a partner just as powerful as themselves."

"What about the second Kira?" Light questioned. "I thought we'd established that he or she is currently working with the first Kira."

"Nothing is ever certain, Light," L reminded him, "And I wasn't talking about the power to kill. It's been obvious from the start that the second Kira is nowhere near as intelligent as the first Kira, and is acing far more like a pawn in his game. No, I believe that neither Zero nor Kira would ever like to work with someone as intelligent as themselves. They would always be too afraid that the other was going to steal their power from them."

"And how do you know this?" Light questioned.

"Because, Light," L answered honestly, "I'm always afraid that you will steal my power from me."

"Ryuzaki," Light replied in fake shock, referring to L with the name he had previously requested, "I would never do that!"

"Sometimes I wonder. As I've stated before, Light, nothing is ever certain."

Light backed up the conversation. "Well, okay, if Kira and Zero aren't working together, then what is going on? I can't imagine that little encounter didn't have consequences."

"That's a simple matter," L told him. "It appears to me that Kira had been eyeing this man for some time, but knew that Zero would get to him eventually. He waited until the moment he deemed perfect and then, and only then, did he kill the ambassador. This serves three purposes: it publicly showcases another important figure killed by Kira, increasing his reach among the people of Japan, it sent a message to Zero of Kira proclaiming his superiority, as he was able to kill the man in a mere moment, while it took much longer for Zero to reach him, and finally, it caused Zero to finally decide to take notice of Kira. All he now has to do is make a mistake, and Kira will be able to end the threat of Zero once and for all."

As had happened many times before, Light was amazed at L for being able to come up with everything he had thought of in such a short amount of time. This, however, just made L even more dangerous, and he continued to grow on Light's priorities. If only he could find his real name…

"That's an interesting theory, Ryuzaki," Soichiro acknowledged. "How did you come up with it?"

"Initial police reports yielded plenty of interesting clues," L answered, as it suddenly occurred to Light that he had forgotten to stop by the area and pick up the ruined walkie-talkie, "and they helped quite a bit. However, I am only certain, or as certain as I can be, of this idea because of one thing."

"And that is?" Soiciro asked.

Light paused. "Because if you were Kira, you would have done the same," he stated with realization.

L turned slightly to nod at Light, the only movement he had made since Light had walked in.

"Then, on the same subject," Light asked, seizing his opportunity, "who do you think Zero is?"

L opened his mouth to respond right before the monitor began distorting. He started, and Light and Soichiro ran up to him.

"What's going on?" Soichiro demanded.

"I believe," L said as the screen came back into focus, "that we're about to receive a message."

Displayed on the screen, in front of all three of them, was a live video of Zero himself. He spoke. "Hello, L."

L nodded in acknowledgment. "Zero. May I ask how you found this place?"

"The greatest detective in the world wishes for me to explain something to him?" Zero sounded amused. "Very well. Finding the city you were in was simple enough. It just required a series of logical questions that any normal man may have followed. After that, your building is the only one in the city that has two sub-levels not connected to the main network, but still running a networking system. You couldn't be connected to the main network, or else Kira or other terrorists could discover and hack into your systems, but you could hardly catch Kira without access to the internet or some electronic substitute. This is the only building that qualifies, so logic dictates you were working out of here."

"I'm impressed," L told him, though he didn't sound impressed at all. "What is it you need?"

"Just by your all being there, you've already answered many of my questions," Zero replied. "As for what I need…I need everything."

The image fizzed out and was suddenly replaced by a blue screen processing hundreds of lines of code at once. Light jumped into a chair and began typing in his own lines of code. "He's hacked into our system! I don't know how, but he did!"

L was typing away furiously alongside him, his thin and sallow physique belying his incredible nimbleness with his fingers. "Anything that's electronic can be hacked. All he needed was a bug or delivery system that could do it."

"Then let's make sure he doesn't leave with anything intact!" Light shouted, slamming his finger on the "Enter" key. The screen vanished, and Light quickly ran through the lines of code again.

"Did he take anything?" Soichiro asked anxiously.

Light looked up, biting his lip. "It's not good. He took our list of suspects for both Kira and Zero, and he took our footage and listings of every murder we suspect Kira in."

"Along with Matsuda's personal collection of home videos," L added dryly. "At least he will be tortured for his crime."

…

Lelouch took out the USB Drive and carefully wrapped it in a piece of linen before taking off his helmet.

"Did it work?" C.C. asked from the bed as she folded a piece of paper.

"I believe so," Lelouch replied. "I never actually thought Nina could be useful for something beyond a false friendship to give my life here more ground, but this virus she created some time ago has really come in handy. I was even given a special bonus I had not expected."

"And that would be?"

"When I was in the building across from the house we were, ahem, reconstructing-"

"You mean destroying?"

"Destruction always comes before creation, C.C." replied Lelouch. "Regardless, Kira tricked me into believing he was in the room with me. Instead, there was merely a walkie-talkie. But it wasn't just any walkie-talkie - it was a very advanced one capable of broadcasting a voice nearly as clearly as if they were right next to you, and could even pick up every word I said from several feet away. It wasn't dissimilar to the kind typically used by the city's police force, but was clearly altered."

C.C. finished folding a dove and set it on the bed next to her. She began work on another. "I assume you're going somewhere with this."

"I saw the exact same type of walkie-talkie in the background while talking to L. Whoever Kira is, he has a connection to someone in that task force."

"That would be interesting indeed," C.C. replied, folding a corner carefully under the dove's stomach.

Lelouch glanced at his watch. "I have enough time before classes start to take a look at the lists." He inserted the USB Drive into a small laptop next to him. It was a wireless laptop with no connection to any other electronic device, including the internet, so there was no way of tracking it from the outside - perfect for reading stolen bits of information. The folder popped up right away, and Lelouch opened up the file of Kira suspects.

He eyes grew slightly larger, and he began scrolling. It took him ten full minutes just to get to the bottom of the list of names.

"This is ridiculous," he cried out. "L must suspect over half the people in the Konto region!"

"The Konto region contains over 42 million people," C.C. commented, setting her newly-folded dove next to three others. "It takes nearly ten hours just to scroll through one million lines. I would say that L has it very well narrowed down."

Lelouch chuckled. "I can't argue with that, C.C." He sat back and closed his eyes, doing a little math. In less than a minute, he opened them. "So the list is about 17,500 names long. I suppose, when you think about it, that's a very short list indeed. Consider me impressed, L." He scraped his thumb over the top row of his teeth. "One of these names is yours, Kira. I'll find you yet." His eyes flicked over to the clock, and he stood up. "But, first, I have some classes to attend. He laughed mirthlessly. "I wonder if you have to do the same."

…

"What do we do now?" Light demanded. "We can't just let this go!"

"Hmm," L hummed. He was writing.

"Ryuzaki, we need something to do!" Soichiro shouted.

L raised a finger. "Quiet."

Their voices dropped instantly.

After a moment, L turned around in his chair. He ran his thin fingers through his greasy hair and laid out a plan.

"If Zero knows where we are, our first priority is to move the headquarters of the Kira Task Force. We can keep this place up as a front, but from now on all serious work must be done somewhere else. It's too dangerous for us to work out of here."

Soichiro raised his hands. "That sounds all right, but where do we go?"

"Let me figure that out. We have other concerns."

"Yeah," Light chimed in, hoping that this was going exactly where he needed it to be, "like how we can continue without the information Zero stole, or how we can stop him from stealing it again."

"Exactly," L affirmed. "Mr. Yagami, why don't you see if your former friends in the police department can get you copies of the tapes I've written on this note. I'm sure a few of them owe you favors."

Soichiro stepped up and grasped the note. "I'll do what I can."

"Light, I have another job for you, one that is equally as important."

Light stepped up. "I'm happy to help."

L reached into his pocket and fished out a computer drive. "This is a duplicate copy of my list of suspects for Zero, along with videos of nearly every event he was sighted at. I had intended to use it for something else, but that's currently irrelevant."

Light took the drive and willed his face not to betray his thoughts. "Why are you giving me this?"

"Because I need you to find out which one of them is the real Zero. We can't afford to let him run loose anymore. If we're checking Kira, we must be checking him, as well, before his work nullifies the effect of the work we're doing."

This was going better than Light could have possibly dreamed. He struggled to maintain a straight face. "But how do you know he won't find Kira first?"

"I had cut down the number of suspects I had for Kira by quite an amount, but there are still 18,000 names on that file. It should be short work if he's as intelligent as I believe, but I'm willing to bet that you'll make shorter work of finding Zero. Because of his public image, he's much more identifiable, and the list of names for him is a mere 15,000."

Light started. "15,000 suspects for Zero? And eighteen for Kira?" He was trying to make it sound like he thought of that amount as a lot, but secretly, he was incredibly impressed, and a little worried, that L had managed to narrow it down so much. A thought crossed his mind. "Then earlier, when you said you were 7% sure I was Kira-"

"For there to be a 7% likelihood of it being you, the vast majority of the names had to have a far smaller number." L replied. "In fact, over 95% of the list had less than a 1% chance of being Kira. So you can see why I was nearly convinced of it being you."

"But we've already crossed that bridge!" Soichiro reminded him. "Light can't be Kira. You said it yourself!"

"I never said anything of the sort. As I have mentioned many times in the past hour alone, nothing is ever certain."

"Are you certain of that?" Light joked.

"No," replied L in a serious tone. "But regardless of whether you are Kira or not, I trust you. I need you to find Zero's name while I work on…other projects."

"I'll start right away," Light replied.

"No, you won't," L corrected. "We both have somewhere to be."

Light laughed. "Sometimes, in light of what we're doing here, I forget classes exist entirely."

"I had noticed that," L affirmed.

"So have I," Soichiro chimed in.

…

School seemed to take forever for both Lelouch and Light, and neither held any interest in what was going on. The minute classes were over, both rushed home for their own purposes.

Light ran upstairs to his room after a quick "Hello" to his mother and sister and sat down at his desk. However, he did not immediately bring up the list of names. Instead, he took out the Death Note, watched the news, and set up killings all throughout the next three days. He couldn't let L, or anyone, believe Kira had become inactive, and hunting down Zero would take all his attention. This took a full hour, but it was eventually done. With that accomplished, Light hid the Death Note in its usual place and finally brought up the list.

"Now," he murmured. "Which one of you is Zero?"

He opened up the video files and began watching them through. He was looking for any clues, any hints, anything he could use to narrow the list down. It took an additional three hours before he finally noticed something.

"Something isn't right," he said aloud, going back to the first time Zero appeared on camera. "After that enormous display, Jeremiah still claimed that he remembered none of it. This wouldn't be unreasonable for an insane man…" he paused to look up Jeremiah Gottwald's official record, "but this man was anything but insane, and claiming memory loss would have done nothing to help him." He clicked through several other videos, and took another hour to go through them and confirm his suspicions. "Many guards and soldiers also reported memory loss after encounters with Zero, and at each point they only don't remember certain instances where they did things that benefited Zero in the long run." His eyes hardened.

"Oh?" Ryuk asked casually.

"Ryuk," Light questioned. "Is it possible that Zero has a Death Note?"

Ryuk lifted his hand and began counting his fingers. "There can only be six Death Notes active on earth at once. There are four here right now."

Light nodded. "Mine, yours, Misa's, and Rem's. If Zero had a Death Note, his shinigami would need one as well, filling up all six slots. So, while it's possible, it's unlikely."

"A shinigami getting two Death Notes is unlikely enough, and it's usually considered a ridiculous idea to drop one in the human world. That's why it happens so rarely." Ryuk confirmed.

"It was just an idea, anyway," Light mused. "Memory loss and complete control over an individual are two very specific signs that a Death Note was involved, so I was curious. However, once a name is written in the notebook, death cannot be avoided, and the thirty-day limit is up for more than one of these cases. Therefore, it's impossible for Zero to be using a Death Note. It's unlikely he even knows of their existence." He smirked. "If L hasn't figured it out by now, what hope does Zero have of doing it? He could never compare to either of us." He frowned, and anger seeped into his face. He stood up and pounded his fist onto the table. "Damn you, Zero! This is a battle between me and L alone, and curse you for getting involved!"

Ryuk backed off slightly. He had known this to happen to Light many times. Ever since receiving the Death Note, the boy had become somewhat emotionally unstable, becoming angry, depressed, or joyously happy for no real reason. Ryuk had learned that when this happened, he shouldn't interfere. Not for his own safety, but because Light may lose it completely and begin shouting at him, exposing him completely as being Kira, and thus ending Ryuk's entertainment. That'd be a very disappointing finish to what promised to be a most interesting battle.

Light began to chuckle. "Oh, you'll suffer for it, Zero. I'll make sure of that. Once I figure out who you are and how you do what you do…" He paused. "Ryuk, it's clear that some otherworldly force is at work, even though it's not a Death Note. Can you tell me what it is?"

Ryuk hummed. "Oh, I have an idea, all right. But I think it would be more fun for you to figure it out on your own."

"Damnit, Ryuk!" Light stood up. "We don't have time for that! Don't you see? I may be searching for him, but he's searching for me, too! Or did you think he just stole the list of Kira suspects because he wanted to put it online for views? That man is smart, Ryuk, and desperate! And so am I! So I need to find him before he finds me, or that's the end of your entertainment, the end of your stay on earth, and," Light's eyes glinted dangerously, "the end of your apples."

Ryuk spread out his hands. "Okay, okay! I'll tell you. Well, what I know, anyway."

"What? What is it you know?"

"Shinigami are gods of death, Light. Don't you wonder why you haven't seen any gods of life?"

Light turned to face his computer numbly. "You mean, there are other gods out there? Ones that could cancel out the effect of the Death Note?"

"No, no." Ryuk shook his head, then stopped for a second. "Well, yes, but that's not what I'm talking about. Our Death Notes can kill any normal human, but there are those it can't kill."

Light turned back to Ryuk. "Who?"

"They've existed for centuries. Millennia, perhaps. Shinigami will run into them every once in a while when we're on earth. They were granted a very powerful gift a long time ago - eternal life."

Light put his fingers on his chin. "How much more do you know about them?"

Ryuk shrugged. "Not much. We keep our distance whenever possible, and they don't claim our Death Notes. I do know, however, that they can give some people certain abilities." He gestured to the screen. "Like the ability to erase memories or control others."

"So that's what Zero has. The ability to control any individual…" Light lowered his fingers and laughed pathetically. "That almost makes me feel cheated. Like I got the short end of the stick."

"It's not all good." Ryuk pointed a bony finger at the Death Note. "This power, Geass, it's called, can be protected against. The Death Note can't."

"How?" Light instantly demanded. "How can I protect myself against it?"

Ryuk cackled. "Just wear a helmet. It can't work on you if the user can't see your eyes."

Light sat down, and relief washed over his face. "That's easy enough. But still, to think there are other humans with powers like mine, perhaps even greater…"

His screen suddenly washed out, and Light whirled his chair around to face it. In seconds, it had reformed itself, and on his screen was, again, Zero. Fully costumed, and up on a stage. Light ran over to the window to see that the video was plastered over every screen outside. So Zero hadn't found him yet, after all.

"Attention, people of Japan!" Zero shouted. Light had always found it interesting how Zero always referred to the place as Japan instead of Area 11, it's designated name. It was a simple thing, but it made all the difference to many of his followers. It was a clever, and very bold, move.

"We have a message for you," Zero continued. He moved flamboyantly on the stage. "The Black Knights don't stand against Brittania. They stand against corruption, against terrorism, and against using your own power to make others suffer. These are all traits Brittania embodies, so we must stand against them in turn. However, we have recently been reminded that they are not the only ones who embody this horrible ideal. The people of Japan have been plagued by someone who uses these traits to the fullest, and can and will end your life without a second thought. It is long past due that somebody did something about it. So, I would like to reveal to everyone the existence of the Kira Task Force, a thus-far secret society led by none other than L himself to find and capture Kira. They need be secret no longer! The Black Knights officially join their efforts, and now mark Kira as an enemy, and they, and I, will make it their goal to see his reign of terror ended!"

There were scattered, but loud, cheers from the crowd in the streets, along with one or two boos. Most people fidgeted and didn't do anything, afraid to pick a side in fear that the other would kill them instantly.

"Kira, I know you're watching this." Zero spoke in a more personal tone now. "We already know there are some you are unable to kill. Am I one of them?" He raised his hands. "Let's find out. Kira, if you can, then kill me! Right here, right now!"

Light sneered. "Zero, you ignorant fool. What are you hoping to do, garner support? The task force never accepted your help, and they never will. Look at those people. My people. They'll never support you, and those that do can cry over your rotting corpse. But not yet. Even if I could kill you now, I wouldn't. There'd be no point to it. You're stuck in this state where you have to be out there constantly, and that could prove far more useful to me than you think. No, I'll kill you, but not yet."

Zero lowered his arms. "I know what you're thinking, Kira. You're telling yourself that you won't kill me, whether or not you can. That it would serve no purpose, or that I could be useful to you in the future. And, to tell you the truth, Kira, I'm counting on that."

Light's eyes widened slightly.

"Many have thought to be able to play me for a fool, but I am no fool, Kira. I will remain a thorn in your side until either I kill you or you decide to pluck me out. And even if you do that, there are others who will take my place. Zero is not a person. It is an idea. An idea of freedom. And the more you try to kill freedom, the stronger it becomes. I know I can fight you, and I know I can fight Brittania. Because I will never die, Kira, and even if I do, you won't be there to see it. Not even you has that much power. You may be inhuman, Kira, but you're no god."

Light's face scrunched up in a show of rage. He spat furiously. "No, Zero! That's where you're wrong! I will be God! I must be God! Who else will be fit to rule the new world? You…you aren't even worthy to tie my shoelaces! There will be a new world, Zero, but you won't be in it!" He took out a wireless disposable phone and dialed a number. It only took a few seconds before it was picked up.

"Watari," Light demanded, "Get me L."

…

Suzaku was getting a Lancelot a tune-up (which always, oddly enough, seemed to include an upgrade) when Zero appeared. He watched the announcement with more interest than the others around him. As Princess Euphemia's personal knight, he had a personal stake in the matter of not only the Brittanian Empire, but in Zero himself as well. However, as he continued to listen to Zero, he found his thoughts shifting.

"Hmm, there he goes again," muttered Lloyd Asplund, creator of the Lancelot and also the only person Suzaku trusted with it, "trying to convince the world he's on their side."

"Hey," Suzaku questioned, "I know Zero is a terrible person, and he's destroying the empire-"

"And, for some reason, the emperor still doesn't consider him a threat," Lloyd went off of Suzaku's statement.

"Yeah, I know, but…what about Kira?"

"What _about_ Kira?"

"Well, he's not exactly much better, but nobody is taking any action against him. They're all focused on Zero."

"As you should be," replied Lloyd. "That's your job. Besides, the Kira Task Force has that handled."

"Unofficially. They aren't even supposed to exist. And If they're working with Zero, I doubt they have it handled."

"Hmm, well, what can you do?" Lloyd asked the question rhetorically, and continued with the tune-up.

"Maybe nothing," Suzaku muttered. But there was someone who could do something. "I'll be back in a few seconds."

"Yes, yes, take your time," Lloyd answered disinterestedly.

Suzaku walked out of the room, brought out a phone, and placed a call. Seconds later, it was picked up.

"Suzaku? I was about to call you."

"Hey, Lelouch," Suzaku replied. He glance back at the TV. Zero was still going strong. There was a time when he suspected Lelouch could be Zero, but there were too many pieces of evidence against the idea. Besides, he really didn't want that to be true. "I need a favor."

"Anything."

"I'm doing some work with the empire-"

"Oh, yes, you're Euphie's royal knight now, right?"

Suzaku bit his lip. "You weren't supposed to know that."

"Just because I don't support Brittania doesn't mean I don't keep tabs on my siblings. You better treat her well."

Suzaku nodded, even though Lelouch couldn't see it. "Of course. But this work has its…limits. I'm not allowed to touch the Kira investigation."

"You say that like there is a Kira investigation."

"I know, we haven't done much, but we have done some things. What I'm saying is…look, if you meet me at the school in an hour, I can give you some files. Everything we have on Kira."

"Why?"

"Because I believe that you stand a better chance of figuring out who it is than all of us over here combined. And because you're not associated with anyone, you can work freely. If you could even get a few suspects, I could probably work something out. I know, this is asking a lot, but-"

"I'll do it."

"Wha- really?"

"Nobody else is doing anything, and if the Task Force, if there truly is one, has sided with Zero, that means they can't be trusted, either. It's a little dangerous, but I've known danger all my life. Kira doesn't scare me."

Suzaku sighed in releif. "Thank you, Lelouch."

"Of course. That's what friends are for. Don't worry, I'll be careful."

"Okay. I'll meet you at the school in an hour."

"Right. See you then."

…

Lelouch hung up and watched from his home as the recording he'd made was broadcast everywhere. It was amazing what people would believe was live just because you put the word in the top-left. "The plan worked. I've moved four ways against Kira. Let's see which way moves back first. Then, we'll know where he is."

"This could backfire, you know," C.C claimed. "What if he discovers the name of another Black Knight? How much are you willing to lose to stop him?"

Lelouch narrowed his eyes. "A long time ago, I had to decide whether the means could justify the end. I decided they had to, for otherwise nobody could ever act out against oppression like this. I will sacrifice as much as I need to in order to see Kira either captured or dead." He shifted his focus away from the screen and to her. "Speaking of Kira and Death, how is it that Kira kills without having to be there? A first, I thought it was a form of Geass, but my studies of the killings have shown this to be physically impossible. He must have some alternate way of doing it."

"Yes, he must," agreed C.C. "Besides, if it was Geass, I likely would have heard of it by now."

"So, C.C. You've lived for centuries, and know more about Geass and otherworldly powers than anyone I know, including other members of the Code. Do you know of anything he could be using?"

C.C. shifted around and frowned as a thought crossed her head. "As a matter of fact, there is something. I hadn't thought of it before, because one hadn't appeared in so long…"

"What hadn't appeared?"

She met his gaze. "You already know about God. And you know about us. We act as gods of life, essentially. But there are gods of death, too."

"Other beings that can bestow powers beyond the Code?"

"Yes and no." She sat up. "Shinigami live in their own world, where they watch over many planets like this one. They can kill a human just by knowing their face - though they can't kill a member of the Code. Every once in a while, though, a shinigami will come to earth itself. They're invisible to human eyes, but will still change the course of history. The Code have known about shinigami for millennia, but they are so rarely seen it doesn't matter that much."

"What more do you know about them?"

"Not much. The Code and shinigami keep their distance from each other. But I do know that sometimes, when they come to earth, they will give their powers to a human."

Lelouch stuck his tongue in his cheek. "Granting the human the ability to kill any other human." He laughed. "What I wouldn't give to have received that…"

"It's not all good," she claimed, pointing a milk-white finger at his eyes. "Geass is imbued into a person. Besides killing that individual or having them kill one of the Code, they can't get rid of it. However, the shinigami must use a certain weapon to kill."

"A weapon?" Lelouch's eyes lit up. "A weapon can be stolen or destroyed. Theoretically, we could take Kira's power away from him without even laying a finger on him. What kind of weapon is it?"

C.C. shook her head. "That's the problem. I don't know. Very few of us do."

Lelouch nodded. "But still, I imagine a god of death is easier to find than the person. We find the shinigami, we find Kira."

"Remember, you can't see him."

"Everything leaves a trail. It's possible his is easier to track than Kira's. It's worth looking into." He looked at her. "Thank you, C.C." And he sounded genuinely grateful. C.C. just nodded in turn.

…

"Alright. Thank you, Ryuzaki." Light hung up. He chuckled. "Oh, Zero. Making that video was the biggest mistake of your life."

Ryuk hovered beside him, clearly curious about their conversation. "So, what's the news?"

Light was only too happy to have someone to explain it to. "I suspected from the beginning that the video was fake. That is, that it was a recording instead of being live. I simply had to ask L to run it through a desconstructor to discover the truth. Lo and behold, the 'Live' symbol was edited in after recording. Zero was trying to mislead me. But why, I asked? Well, that's simple. He knew the first thing I would do would be to check to see which of my suspects was unaccounted for during the broadcast, narrowing down my search to only a few. Since that search still had to exclude him, he would make sure to be busy just enough to seem innocuous, but not busy enough to seem suspicious, especially considering there's a terrorist on every screen in the country. The simplest and most elegant solution was to arrange for someone to call him. I knew he would do this, so I also asked L to look through our composite cellular data dump and see every name called during the broadcast. He sent the list to me." Light's phone beeped. "And here it is," he continued.

He connect the phone to his computer with a charger, imported the list, and set up a quick code to cross-reference it with the list of suspects. Within five minutes, it was done. Light looked at the names once. "And thus, 15,000 becomes 300." He cracked a smile.

"Doesn't that seem risky? To just dismiss that many people on a hunch?" Ryuk asked.

Light looked hurt. "Ryuk, I'm disappointed. Have a little more faith in me. I've been studying Zero's personality well before this all began. Trust me, he's one of these 300."

"And if he's not?"

Light shrugged. "Then I'll die. But I'm not worried. I'm positive that one of these names is Zero's real identity." He rubbed his hands together. "And the list is so short now," he mused. "We're getting close to the end. I can feel it."

…

Lelouch closed his eyes. It'd been two hours since the broadcast ended, and Kira had not taken the bait as well as he hoped he would. He had already received the disk from Suzaku, but he wanted to wait until he had more of his own data before he jumped to conclusions.

"Well," he declared, getting up, "this has gone on a little too slowly for my tastes. I'll be out visiting, C.C. When you see Sayoko, please tell her I've gone to see a friend, and to take care of Nunnally's bedtime requirements."

"Of course," replied C.C. She was eating a slice of pizza, of course - when she wasn't making origami, that was always what she seemed to be doing.

Lelouch walked out of the building. On the file he had stolen were the personal home videos of a member of the Anti-Kira Task Force by the name of Matsuda. By paying careful attention to the videos, he'd extrapolated a location for the house. He already knew Kira knew someone inside the Task Force or could even be someone inside the task force. He just needed to know how wide that circle was.

He took a train and arrived shortly. He knocked sharply on the door three times, and, when it opened, did his best to look like a bright-eyed, hopeful student.

"Hello! My name is Lelouch Lamperouge, and I'm studying at Ashford Academy."

"Oh," the man was somewhat pale-faced with disheveled hair, but looked pleasant enough. He had a kind of awkwardness about him, like he never quite knew what to say or do at any given moment. "You're a Brittanian."

"That's right."

"Then you don't want anything to do with an eleven like me."

"On the contrary. I'm doing a report on Area 11's central police force, and I'm trying to get some exclusive interviews with former members. Can I talk to you?"

"Oh, uh, sure, I guess so! But some of that stuff is top secret, and I can't tell you about that, obviously."

"Oh, don't worry, I won't pry." Lelouch smiled. "If I could step in-"

"Of course!" Matsuda opened the door up to him.

Lelouch and Matsuda went into the living room, where Lelouch sat down on a chair, and Matsuda sat across from him.

"Now," Lelouch said, and appeared to rub his eyes, "tell me whatever I want to know." As he said the last half of the sentence, he lowered his arm, revealing his red eyes with the symbol of a bird permanently locked in.

His Geass ran into Matsuda's mind, who then sat up straighter and declared "I will tell you whatever you wish to know, my king."

Lelouch replaced the contacts and began asking his questions. "Name everyone on the Anti-Kira Task Force."

"L, though we call him Ryuzaki, Watari, Chief Yagami, his son Light, Aiber, Wedy, Hideki Ide, Mogi, Aizawa was gone for a while, but now he's back, Ukita was killed by the second Kira, and me."

Lelouch frowned. "The second Kira?"

"Yes."

"There are two Kiras?"

"Ryuzaki thinks so."

Lelouch sat back. "You know what? Why don't you just tell me everything about the Task Force, starting from the beginning?"

Matsuda nodded and began.

…

"Oh, what is this, Zero? Have I found you?" Light questioned.

"What is it?" Ryuk asked, chewing loudly on an apple.

Light smiled maliciously. "On a hunch, I decided to look up each of these names in the national registry. If I know Zero, and I do know Zero, he's a little too overprotective." He clicked a link, bringing him to a page in the registry. "And it may very well have cost him his life."

"Lelouch Lamperouge? What's so special about this guy?" Ryuk wondered aloud.

"What's so special is that this is the only one out of all of the names without a picture. Every name on the registry legally has to have a dated picture, but somebody has removed this one."

Ryuk bit into the apple again. "And you think he removed his?"

"He knows I can't kill him if I don't know what his face looks like. It seems as though he decided to remove his face from the national record."

Ryuk laughed. "Seems like a rookie mistake to me. Are we sure it's not coincidence?"

"It could be, but I don't think so. And it's hardly a rookie mistake. If I were any less intelligent, I wouldn't have even thought to look for his face here, much less for the lack of one." He stuck his thumb in his mouth. "Regardless, Lelouch is now our prime suspect. I'll check for anything to confirm this tomorrow. In fact, I may pay him a little visit. I'd say it wouldn't be undue."

…

Lelouch walked home thoughtfully. After he had asked all of his questions, he was able to somehow take down the Geass by saying "that's enough" and then asked more questions about Matsuda's former police work so as to not leave any gaps in his memory. However, that was merely a safety precaution. He already knew every single thing he would ever need to.

Light Yagami was Kira.

He wasn't 100% sure, but he was, by far, his best suspect. Even after running the list through every modifier based around Kira he could think of and even the very short list Suzaku had given him, Light Yagami was still a suspect, and everything Lelouch had heard about what Light did in comparison to what Kira did reminded Lelouch of himself. If he were Kira, he would have done those exact same things. As would have L, he imagined, which could very well have been a big reason L suspected him so much. L, however, had a disadvantage: he didn't know about Geass, Shinigami, or anything like that. He didn't even realize there were forces above natural at work in the world. But lelouch knew. And because he did, much more made sense to him - including the period of some months when Light had gone through the procedure that had convinced everyone, even L, that Light couldn't be Kira. That could be explained away as forced memory loss on Light's part using his otherworldly powers. Lelouch had done something very similar himself when facing Mao for the second time

So, yes, Light was Lelouch's number one suspect. And even though he wasn't certain, a little visit couldn't hurt. Tomorrow, Lelouch would stop by the Yagami household. He would get his proof then.

…

The next morning, Light took a slightly different way to the university. This way brought him past Ashford Academy, and he stopped to look in a little.

"Look at that, Ryuk," He pointed across the yard, where a girl was making a mark on the school wall.

"So, she's marking the days of school. So what?" Ryuk asked.

Light shook his head. "If you add up the marks and go backwards, that day is well past the beginning of the school year. In fact, it's hardly significant at all." He paused. "However, it is only a few days before Zero revealed himself to the world, and only a day after Clovis' death. If I were Zero, and I were attending this school, I'd want to know as much about my new abilities as possible - including how long they last." He gestured again to the girl, who, by now, had finished marking the wall. She noticed his wave, giggled, and ran off. "A very smart move." He laughed. "Unfortunately, it's also a costly mistake. Come on, Ryuk, we don't want to be late."

…

After school the next day, Lelouch went to his apartment, made sure everything would be fine for Nunnally until later, and then left to visit the Yagami household. Little did he know that Light himself had just left to visit Lelouch's own apartment.

Shortly after Lelouch knocked on the door, it was answered by a cheerful young girl with laughter in her eyes. "Hi!" she said happily.

Lelouch smiled. "You must be Sayu. Light talks about you quite a bit."

"Yep, that's me!" Sayu beamed. Then she stopped in surprise. 'Wait, my brother talks about me with his friends?!"

Lelouch laughed lightheartedly. "Don't worry, it's all good things. I'm here to visit Light. Is he around?"

"Oh, no, you just missed him. But you can wait up in his room, and he should be back soon!"

Lelouch nodded. This was a better outcome than he had expected. "I would like that very much, thank you."

After being shown up to Light's room, Lelouch watched Sayu go down the stairs before cracking open the door. But the moment he turned the handle, he saw a piece of paper lodged between the doorframe and the door itself. Lelouch bit his lip. That was too simple a trick for someone like Kira. If Light was Kira, this would just be a distraction. The real trick to see if someone had been in his room would be something else. He opened the door and let the paper flutter to the ground. As he opened it, he listened carefully, and then he heard it - a snap, like something very small was breaking. His thoughts immediately turned to the door hinge, and he turned to inspect them. Surely enough, inside one of the hinges was a now-broken pen. Luckily, Lelouch knew he had a pen of the same make in his school bag. He fished around for it, brought it out, and swapped the broken one for it.

Now he turned around to inspect the rest of the room. It was very dark, so he turned on the light. It shone brightly, like the bulb was brand-new. The first thing his eyes fell upon was a key inserted into a locked drawer in his dresser. Carefully opening it, he found nothing but a diary inside. He took out the diary and skimmed it, but there was nothing of interest inside of it.

 _No_ , he thought. _That can't be it._ But, try as he might he couldn't find a fake bottom, secret panel, or anything of the sort - though the was a slightly off scent in the air, a little like something was burning, but he couldn't tell where it was coming from. He looked at the top of the desk. Some basic homework materials, and a couple pens neatly tucked away. He casually picked one up and tried to write on his hand with it, only to find it was out of ink. He shrugged. He investigated the rest of the room, but turned up with nothing, until he finally sat down in a chair and began to think.

…

"May I get it?" Nunnally asked C.C. when there was a knock on the door.

"That wasn't Lelouch's knock," C.C. reminded her.

"I know, but just because I'm blind and can't walk doesn't mean I'm useless. I can still get the door."

C.C. nodded. "Very well, then."

Nunnally wheeled over to the door and opened it, to be greeted by a strange young man. He lifted his hands behind his head and laughed nervously. "Um, hi. My name is-"

"Light Yagami," C.C. finished for him.

Light's eyes narrowed. "Do I know you?"

"No, but I know you."

Light stared, a thousand thoughts going through his mind before she finally said "You had a perfect score on the To-Oh University Entrance Exam. There are few who have accomplished that."

"Oh," he replied. He smiled weakly. "Well, it wasn't that big a deal. Besides, another guy did it, too. On the same day." He bent down to Nunnally. "I'm here to see Lelouch."

"Oh, you're one of my brother's friends? That's great! He's not here right now, but he'll be back soon. You can wait for him!"

"Oh, I'll just wait a little while," Light answered. In truth, he was elated. This had gone far better than he had hoped.

Nunnally wheeled out of his way. "My name is Nunnally, and this is C.C. She's my brother's fiancée." She giggled.

Ryuk coughed heavily, and Light glared in his direction, but his face softened as soon as he heard the next words out of Ryuk's mouth.

"Light, C.C. is an immortal's name."

Light made his way over to C.C. and smoothly took her hand. He smiled. "A pleasur eto meet you. What a…unique name."

"Thank you," she said somewhat disinterestedly. Her eyes seemed to pierce his soul, as if she knew everything about him from a glance. Light suddenly found himself uneasy. There were very few people who could do that.

"Take a seat here," C.C. told him, patting the table.

"Ah, yes, thank you. I won't be too long." In truth, Light had already found more than he'd ever need. He was convinced.

Lelouch Lamperouge was Zero.

…

Lelouch only stayed an hour longer in the room before deciding to head back. He requested Sayu to not tell Light he'd been there (it was supposed to be a surprise, he'd said, but he could do it another day), and was fairly satisfied with what he'd already seen. He was convinced that Light Yagami was Kira.

With that in mind, he still had two stops to make. He could make one of them now, in fact. He found a phone booth by the street, stepped into it, inserted the money, and made a call. The phone rang, and then was picked up.

"Hello?"

Lelouch tried to make his voice sound desperate. "Suzaku, it's Lelouch."

"Lelouch? You sound like you're in trouble."

"I've been looking into what you gave me, and I think I have a lead - but it could turn out to be dangerous."

"Lelouch, a lead is all I asked for. You don't have to go any further!"

"If I don't, this lead could be lost forever! Look, Suzaku…if I die in the next two days, Kira's real name is Light Yagami. Tell L. Tell him Lelouch Vi Brittania said so."

"You want me to use your real name?"

"If I'm dead, it's not like I'm going to be using it. Besides, something tells me that name will have more sway."

"Lelouch, you're not going to die. I won't let-"

"Suzaku, sometimes things happen that we just can't control. I know that more than anyone. Just…promise me that if I go, you'll take care of Nunnally."

"Lelouch-"

"Swear it, Suzaku."

"I swear. I won't leave her alone."

Lelouch sighed in relief. "Thank you, Suzaku. I'll see you tomorrow, if I'm still around to see you." He hung up.

Perfect.

He continued walking, heading straight for home. Heading in the exact opposite direction, directly in front of him, was none other than Light Yagami himself. The two passed each other, and if either noticed, they didn't show it.

…

Light got home and immediately went upstairs. His paper was there, and he opened the door a crack, and his pen was there - or was it? The handle of the door hadn't been the five degrees south he always set it at. That's why the paper and the pen were there. He opened the door fully and took another look at the pen. He laughed derisively.

"It looks like somebody tried to prevent my noticing they entered this room. But they forgot something. The pen I always put in here is exactly half empty. Never more, never less. That's to prevent a situation just like this. This pen is almost full, and it doesn't have the same scratches as the other. Somebody replaced this pen." He took the pen out and opened the door. "Sayu, was someone here while I was gone?"

Sayu skipped up to his door and shook her head. "Nope!"

Light laughed. "Sayu," he teased, "you're a terrible liar. It's written all over your face. Lelouch came by, didn't he?"

Sayu's face fell. "Aw, man. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to spoil the-"

"It's quite all right, Sayu." Light smiled. "Thanks for trying to keep the secret."

She left the door, and he closed it. Then he punched the wall. "I'm such an idiot!" he seethed. "I leave the Death Note here, unprotected, while I'm being hunted by Zero himself. And then I leave and let Zero into my house and into my room!"

"Hey," Ryuk told him, "before you get all whiny, why don't you see if the Death Note is still there? You hid it well, after all."

Seeing he was right, Light seized a pen from his desk. He unscrewed the cap and took out the tube. He then used the tube to push up through a in the bottom of the drawer, opening a false bottom. Underneath the bottom was the Death Note, surrounded by wiring that would erupt into flames if the bottom was opened by anything but the inner tube of a ballpoint pen. The Death Note looked completely undisturbed. He took it out and inspected every inch of it, then breathed a sigh of relief.

"Nothing's wrong. Nothing's changed or missing, and it has no markings that form when a page vanishes. It's like he didn't even touch it. Which I hope he didn't." Light placed the Death Note back in its place and covered it all back up. He scrunched up his nose. "Something was up at that house. They were hiding more than one secret. Why do I feel like if I wrote "Lelouch Lamperouge" in the Death Note, he still wouldn't die?"

"Maybe because you still haven't seen his face," Ryuk suggested.

Light eyed him wearily. "Yes, that's true. Well, we have the whole night ahead of us to figure that out. Tomorrow morning, one way or another, this ends."

…

Lelouch woke up bright and early the next morning, finding, somewhat to his surprise, that he was still alive. But he wasn't prepared for the grisly sight that greeted him when he looked out the window. Four other students were sprawled out on the ground, dead, with their blood painte don the ground spelling out a clear message.

 _I know the truth of who you are. Meet me at 9 AM where you first killed the mind-reader. Go alone. If you don't, I will kill whoever you bring, and then I will kill Nunnally. I want to watch you die._

He grit his teeth. "Damn you, Kira. They didn't have to die." He set his eyes. "But you do."

…

Light was wearing a mask, and was at the old, abandoned amusement park at 9:00 sharp. Lelouch wasn't. Light checked his watch. The fact that Lelouch hadn't shone up yet surprised him. He thought he would be more concerned with-

Suddenly, the large jumbotron-like screen behind him lit up with Zero's mask on it. Light turned to face it.

"You'll forgive me for not showing up in person, Light. Or, should I say, Kira."

Light chuckled. "Well, I suppose I don't need this. You can't use your Geass through a screen." He took off his mask, revealing his face to Lelouch for the first time. Finally, Lelouch stared his greatest foe right in the face. "Yes," Light said, "I know all about your Geass."

"I figured you would. I know all about your shinigami."

"I figured you would. Do you want to take off that mask, so we can finally see each other face-to-face?"

"No, I think I'll leave it on for now."

Light laughed. "Banking on the fact that I can't kill you if I don't know what you look like. But I do know you, Lelouch. And I know who you are."

"Then I suppose you expected this?" Lelouch held up a piece of lined paper with a single name: Sayu Yagami.

Light's eyes widened. "A paper from the Death Note? But…how?!"

"It's incredible the skills one can pick up when they're needed most. You see, Light, you hid your Death Note cleverly, but you made three simple mistakes. The first was leaving that key in the drawer. After the lengths you went to in order to see if anybody had entered your room without you knowing, it was impossible for you to do something as foolish as leave a key locking up your diary inside the drawer it was supposed to lock. That told me the dairy was a red herring right away. The second was your use of copper wiring for the emergency electrical system. While it is cheap, easy to set up, and creates quite the explosion, it also gives off a particular odor when electricity is running through it. I noticed this right away, so I knew there was a false bottom in that drawer and a failsafe so I could never open it without knowing exactly how. Your third mistake was the empty pen. Why would you keep an empty ballpoint pen on your desk when everything else was so neat and orderly? The only reason I could think of would be if the pen being empty benefited you somehow. And that's when I remembered that a plastic tube was well-suited to halting a flow of electricity. A simple push later, and there it was. A shinigami's weapon. The source of your power, at my fingertips. And inside, all the proof in the world. However, there was still the tiniest possibility of you not being Kira, and the notebook being planted there. If you weren't I couldn't afford to let you die, since you were likely our best shot at stopping him otherwise. So I didn't write your name right away. But I knew you were Kira, 100%, the moment I passed you later in the street and saw you had your very own god of death following you everywhere. By the way, hello, Mister Shinigami."

Ryuk laughed heartily. "He got you good!"

Light fell to his knees. "So…you just killed my sister?! Just to what, prove a point?"

"I didn't know you cared about your family," Lelouch mused. "I certainly don't. And now that I've seen your face, I can kill you, too. It's over, Light. Kira."

Light hunched down and began to shake. He was shaking so hard, it looked like he may have had a heart attack.

"Um, Light?" Ryuk tried to get his attention. Light raised his head, and, to everyone's surprise, he wasn't shaking out of fear or sorrow.

He was laughing.

"Oh, Lelouch, you think you won, don't you! Think you got it all figured out? Well, you don't! His eyes glinted. "Go ahead, write my name."

"Enough!" shouted Lelouch. He raised the paper and began to right, only to suddenly freeze halfway through. "Wha-what's happening?"

"The history of the royal Brittanian family is so interesting!" Light was laughing like a madman now. "A brother and sister, named Lelouch and Nunnally, banished to Japan, only to vanish, and then suddenly another brother and sister named Lelouch and Nunnally appear out of nowhere! Not to mention the brother has the exact same physical features and the sister is paralyzed and blind! Did you honestly think nobody would see any kind of connection? You thought I would just write "Lelouch Lamperouge" and be done with it? No. It was so easy to figure out your real name and plan this all out to the very last moment, Lelouch Vi Brittania."

"But…my face-"

"Modern technology is so wonderful. Did you know there are dozens of websites out there who can easily take a picture of a child and figure out exactly how he will look as man? You may have cleared your photo records as Lelouch Lamperouge, but Lelouch Vi Brittania remained. All I had to do was take the extrapolated picture and imagine it as I wrote your name, and lo and behold, it works!" He laughed further. "You still don't get it, Lelouch. I am God. And you can never, and will never, change that."

"You planned all of this?" Lelouch gasped, holding one hand over his heart. "But…your sister!"

"Collateral damage." Light waved it off. "You were right, Lelouch. I don't care about my family. What does God need with a family? With friends? With anything?" He laughed. "Oh, Nunnally is going to be devastated when she learns you're dead. The one person in the world she has left is gone. But don't worry; I'll take good care of her."

Lelouch summoned all his energy into one final phrase. "YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

Light's smile widened so large it could fit on the planet. "No, I'm not a son of a bitch. I'm the son of a policeman and the heir to God's throne."

Lelouch finally gave out his last gasp and collapsed.

He was dead.

Light had won.

Light laughed, and laughed, and laughed. "Yes, you were a thorn in my side, Zero. So how's that for plucking you out?!"

He was suddenly tapped on the shoulder. He whirled around, and was suddenly met with a command of "Be still!"

Lelouch's Geass ran into his mind and settled. Light was still.

Lelouch calmly reached down and plucked his bag out of his hand. He put his hand into the bag and took out the Death Note. "I'll take this." He smiled scarily at Light. "It was an excellent performance, wouldn't you say? Ironically, I tried the same trick on Mao the first time I was here. After you found out that the first announcement was little more than a recording, I thought you'd be harder to fool. Clearly, you were not."

"It…was a recording?! But that's impossible! You answered all my questions!"

"Madmen are so easy to predict. Just like I knew you would find my real name. But I picked up a little something from your Death Note." He opened the book. "Look at this. This woman you killed went by her married name. And this man, here, he had his name changed not that long ago. So it's not the name you're born with that matters. It's what your name becomes. With that in mind, all I had to do was legally change my name, and suddenly, I was safe for the night. And, not that you would care, but your sister is perfectly fine. There was no physical way to steal a page from your notebook without you noticing. That paper was from a ordinary notebook."

Lelouch continued to gloat, explaining further points of what he'd done, but Light wasn't listening. "Ryuk," Light whispered, just low enough so Lelouch wouldn't hear him. "The eye deal. I'll take it."

Ryuk showed slight surprise, but nonetheless made the deal quickly.

And Light saw Lelouch's real name as it currently was: Julius Kingsley.

Lelouch's command was vague enough. Light couldn't move his arms or legs, but could talk and move his fingers and toes. And because of the position he'd been frozen in, that's all he needed. While Lelouch was still gloating, he moved his forefinger and silently clicked his watch three times. Out sprang a small piece of the Death Note. He dug the spindle into his skin, drawing blood, and passed the blood between each of his fingers until it reached the bottom two. Then, desperately, he quickly, and quietly, tried to write the name on the paper-

He screamed in pain as suddenly the note, and his wrist under it, had a bullet hole right through it. He couldn't write on it ever again.

Lelouch breathed heavily. "That was close. I nearly didn't notice until it was too late. That just goes to show I can't be too cocky." He smiled and reached into Light's coat, pulling out his .38 Revolver. He made a _tsk-tsk_ sound. "Don't you know this is illegal to carry around? Well, one more crime you'll pay for now." He pointed the gun at Light's head.

"Hey, hey!" Ryuk stopped him. "Sorry, but the rules say I have to be the one to kill him using my Death Note, since I'm the original owner of his."

"Then, Mister Shinigami," Lelouch replied cooly, "Write: Light Yagami dies after being shot in the head in five seconds."

Ryuk shrugged, pulled out his notebook, and began to write.

"No, Ryuk!" screamed Light. "Write _his_ name! What about your entertainment? What about your apples? When I'm God, you can have all the apples you-"

There was a gunshot, and Light was silenced forever.

 **-KO!-**

Hours later, Lelouch, dressed fully as Zero, arrived at the former headquarters for the Kira Task Force. Only one person was there.

"L."

"Lelouch," replied L.

Lelouch was shocked. "You know?"

"It took a bit to figure out but, yes, when I put my mind to it, it was obvious."

Lelouch took off his helmet and shook his head. "You really are as good as they say."

"You've killed Kira, I assume, considering you're still standing?"

"Yes."

"How unfortunate. I truly wanted to see him before he died. To know what kind of a person could do what he did."

"Do you want to know who it was?"

"Was it not Light?"

"No, it was."

L dipped his head and sighed deeply. "I suppose it couldn't be helped. Why have you come here?"

"To give you this, as a sign of goodwill." Lelouch handed him the Death Note.

"As a sign that you don't want me interfering with your plans to kill yourself, you mean." L corrected.

"You discovered that, as well?"

"You can hardly have one without the other." L glanced at the notebook. "What is this?"

"Kira's weapon. What he used to kill people."

"Would you not like to use it yourself?"

Lelouch shook his head. "I saw what it did to him. I can't do that - become that. At least, not to myself."

"I suppose," mused L, "that there are prices even you won't pay." He turned his chair around, looking Lelouch straight in the face. "Good luck, Lelouch."

"And to you as well." He smiled. "One day, just for fun, I'll find your real name."

L raised an eyebrow. "I look forward to it."

Lelouch replaced his helmet and left the building silently.

L turned back to the monitor. "What a shame," he sighed unhappily.

…

Well, I guess Light wasn't the apple of Ryuk's eye. Hah, get it? What do you mean it's not funny? I spent six hours coming up with that one!

Both Light and Lelouch were incredibly similar, to the point where it's almost impossible to call this one. However, Lelouch held a few key advantages - and his powerful mind was specifically attuned to find these advantages and use them perfectly.

Both were average physically, unless you count tennis-playing skill, but this wasn't a physical battle. It was a battle of the mind - and Lelouch's mind has accomplished far more than Light's had. Let's compare some of their most impressive feats: In terms of long-term planning, Light was able to predict many of his own movements and the movements of two organizations over the next several months in an enormous plan to get the Death Note back after convincing everyone he wasn't Kira. Lelouch, however, predicted many of the movements of every military force in the world, including his own, most of the countries' leaders and nearly every one of the world's best strategists over the next two years in an elaborate plan to, well, take over the world and destroy all the anger and hatred in it with one blow - a far more impressive feat. In terms of short-term planning, Light was able to predict and construct the basic movements and thought patterns of an FBI Agent within a few hours, and used this to kill every FBI Agent sent to Japan in one fell swoop. In the same amount of time, Lelouch predicted every single word and response by a mind-reading geass user who also was completely insane and supposedly unpredictable, including how long it would take this person to say those words, and plan all of his responses accordingly, then record himself saying all of this to create the illusion that he was talking to the mind-reader over live video - a feat not even the best detectives in the world could boast. And Lelouch performed this feat twice, the second time against Schniezal, a strategist who could have very well matched Light in intellect. When it comes to opponents, Light only ever faced two strategists with anywhere near his intelligence, and only defeated one of them, while Lelouch faced at least four, and defeated _all_ of them. At his prime, Light had a few countries running scared. At _his_ prime, Lelouch had the entire world running scared. In the end, Light was outmatched and eventually killed well before his full plan could come to fruition, and Lelouch's plan, well, _did_ come to fruition completely despite the best efforts of the entire world. He only "died" at the exact moment he predicted and needed to in order for his plan to be complete.

Besides Lelouch being somewhat mentally superior, his Geass is a far more viable tool than the Death Note. Even ignoring most of the lesser known of the dozens upon dozens of the Death Note's many rules and restrictions, it still requires a victim's name and face and enough time to write it down before it will kill that person, while Geass merely requires fleeting eye contact and a few words. The Death Note can only kill somebody and somewhat control them in the moments before their death, but Geass can force that person to do, or try to do, pretty much anything. Heck, the Death Note can't even force someone to do something they would never normally do, and Lelouch's Geass forced Euphiemia, a.k.a. the world's most innocent, loving, peaceful soul, to kill every Japanese she could find (including the man she was in love with), and only elicited a few moments of struggle. Yes, Geass can be cancelled out and the Death Note can't, but only by certain devices created after some years of studying using technology that isn't available to anyone in Light's world. It's pretty much impossible for Light to get his hands on anything that could cancel it out.

Lelouch also has a few other slight advantages. He's fallen into traps less often, has far more experience in combat, and has more experience with his abilities than Light has with the Death Note. His costume offers more protection than anything Light has, and while both have handguns, Lelouch is a better shot. Not to mention that Lelouch's true name is hidden three times over, and his face is almost always masked, making it that much harder for Light to kill him with the Death Note. And when Lelouch discovers the Death Note, as he will just as inevitably as Light would discover his Geass, there are an assortment of loopholes Lelouch would instantly think to take advantage of - that's kind of his specialty. However, there are very few things Light could do to protect himself from Geass except for wearing a mask - which is already something most of Lelouch's enemies do. Even when it comes to their respective experts on their otherworldly powers, Ryuk held no care for who lived and who died. He was just there to watch everything play out - and maybe eat some apples. However, C.C. had a decided interest in keeping Lelouch alive for multiple reasons, and so would assist him in any way he wished. And while Ryuk is a shinigami, so it's unlikely Lelouch's Geass would work on him, C.C., being a member of the Code, is immortal by any physical means except under very specific circumstances, so it'd be unlikely the Death Note would work on her, either. Not to mention that C.C. isn't even her real name, so…

When it comes down to it, Lelouch just had the right advantages. He was a better strategist, his abilities were more applicable, and he had more experience both in combat and when facing other brilliant minds and foes with otherworldly abilities. Plus, if I wanted to include his full arsenal, I could have always just given him his Knightmare, with which he could kill Light any one of a million different ways in seconds.

It appears that Light was forced to relive his Near-death encounter.

 **The winner is Lelouch Vi Brittania.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle…

A yellow-green turtle launches his fist at a red man, sending him flying through the air and landing several miles away.

VS.

A yellow penguin launches his hammer at a pink puffball, sending him flying through the air and landing several miles away.

(Bowser vs. King Dedede)

…

 _It's time for the first round of:_

 **Why That Matchup?**

 _In this mini-series that I'll do every few episodes, I answer the unspoken, and spoken, questions about why I chose to have a certain character fight certain characters over others. Confusing? Don't worry, you'll get it pretty quickly here:_

 _ **The Meta vs. Black Beetle:**_

 **Q:** Why did the Meta fight Black Beetle instead of fighting…the Predator?

 **A:** While the Meta and the Predator have similarities, and this was the Meta's most highly requested fight, in my research, I found it way too one-sided. Let's put it like this: Battle Starts, and the Meta activates his Temporal Distortion. While time is slowed, he beheads the Predator using his cuts-through-titanium-with-ease Brute Shot. KO. Or: Battle Starts, Meta puts up Overshield, literally nothing the Predator has can get through to him. The Meta saunters up and kills the Predator however he wants. KO. Or: The two ignore their weapons and enter a fistfight. The Predator's punches do nothing to the sniper-bullet/mine-field tanking suit, and the Meta decapitates him with a single 300 ton punch. KO. See what I mean? The fight against Black Beetle still held many of the same similarities, but was far more even.

 **Q:** Why did the Meta fight Black Beetle instead of fighting…Fulgore?

 **A:** The Meta is literally everything Fulgore is and much, much more. The winner would be obvious from the start.

 **Q:** Why did the Meta fight Black Beetle instead of fighting…the Heavy?

 **A:** The Heavy dies in one shot with a rocket launcher. Need I say more?

 **Q:** Why did the Meta fight Black Beetle instead of fighting…Deathstroke?

 **A:** Actually, The Meta vs. Deathstroke would be an incredibly epic fight. But so would be/was a fight against another DC villain, Black Beetle, and while Deathstroke is more popular, the Meta has a lot, and I mean a lot, more in common with Black Beetle than he does with Deathstroke. In fact, The Meta and Deathstroke share almost no ties to warrant a Death Battle. What a shame.

 **Q:** Why did Black Beetle fight The Meta instead of fighting…uhhhhhh…

 **A:** Yeah, nobody cares enough about Black Beetle to suggest battles for him anywhere on the internet. Oh, well.

 **Q:** Why The Meta vs. Black Beetle at all?

 **A:** In addition to having been great soldiers for powerful military forces whose minds were taken over by sadistic A.I. Implants, the two also shared several other similarities, like insane durability, building-level strength, the ability to process the world at a far faster rate than anyone else, and both are skilled with powerful bladed weapons and powerful guns. They were also both mostly made by their armor and the extra abilities it granted them. Without it, they're rather weak. Both were once mercenaries in dubiously canon material, both have similar fighting styles, and both only speak through their A.I. Implants. Plus, they're kind of mirror matches to each other. Black Beetle is the strongest villain in a kid's show starring a bunch of superheroes, and the Meta is the strongest villain in an adult's show starring the most useless people ever. Of all time. Oh, and Black Beetle tends to call everything "Meat" which is an anagram of "Meta," so all around it seemed like a match made in heaven. A terrible version of heaven where everyone battles to the death.

There you go! I hope this answered some subconscious (or conscious) questions! I'll probably do one on Kamek vs. Twilight Sparkle later. Probably.


	6. Bowser vs King Dedede

_Episode 5: Bowser (Mario) vs. King Dedede (Kirby)_

Throughout history, one clear question has remained without an answer: Brain or Brawn? Well, these two video game villains use their overwhelming strength to prove that with enough brawn, you don't need brain to be successful. Bowser, Mario's greatest rival, and King Dedede, the self-proclaimed king of Dreamland. These two titans have fought before, but never with more than one incarnation counted, and that was when both characters were severely weakened versions of the originals. I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who might win a Death Battle.

For clarification, every version of these characters available will be combined into one to be used in the analysis, including feats and history from shows, comics, games, toys, movies, manga, and even alternate versions of the characters such as Paper Bowser or Smash Dedede. However, the original, canon version will hold precedence when it collides with another medium or non-canon version (such as origin stories or specific weaknesses). While Light and Lelouch have a simple, pure form that everyone recognizes, so it makes sense to exclude certain side stories or non-canon material, Bowser and King Dedede are more subjective in that manner, and have multiple forms spread throughout canon and non-canon material that many recognize. Because of this (and because it makes for a better fight), we'll use a composite version of both characters. Don't get confused.

And, for the third time in a row, this was planned to be a later battle, but was moved up in celebration of both Kirby's 25th Anniversary and Super Mario Odyssey. Both happened this month, so what better way to celebrate both at the same time than by doing the most highly requested Mario universe vs. Kirby universe fight online?

 **Bowser:**

Hundreds of years ago, seven Star Children were born. These children had enormous magical power imbued in their hearts, and each one would play a major role in changing the fate of the universe. And the most malicious, most diabolical, most threatening one of the bunch was Bowser Koopa, heir to the throne of the Koopa Kingdom. Trained and fathered all his life by the powerful wizard Kamek, Bowser quickly ascended to the throne, and with his incredible strength and durability, nothing seemed to be able to touch him. A natural conqueror, he set out to capture the whole planet not long after becoming an adult. Actually, he almost succeeded. In just a few years, he'd already conquered fourteen kingdoms, and was set to take the Mushroom Kingdom as well - until two plumbers from Brooklyn named Mario and Luigi washed down a drainage pipe, ended up in the Mushroom Kingdom, and utterly destroyed him. He got his revenge shortly after by turning all the citizens of the kingdom into brick and kidnapping the princess of the land, Peach, but was then stopped, again, by the same plumbers. However, something unexpected happened. See, Bowser initially kidnapped Princess Peach because she was another Star Child, and held the ability to counter any of his spells and potentially even defeat him in battle, so she was too dangerous to remain free and too deadly to kill. Then, while she was in his dungeon, he actually fell in love with her. After she was freed, he blamed Mario for stealing her heart and declared a permanent war on the Mushroom Kingdom. From then on, every week or so, Bowser would come up with a new plan, capture Princess Peach, and she would be rescued by Mario. This went on for over a hundred years (with their abilities as Star Children granting every one of them extended life), and Bowser almost won. Every time. Every single week or two, for a hundred years, he almost won - and never did.

Still, when you're competing against gods, demons, and planetary-level plumbers, you better have some serious firepower up your sleeve, and Bowser most certainly does. He's a vicious and resilient fighter who's mastered no less than six separate martial arts, including Karate, Boxing, and Jujutsu, and even held enough skill to temporarily handle a master of Plumb Fu, which is directly stated to be the most powerful martial art in existence. Oh, and he's an excellent swordsman and a crack shot with any firearm - and yes, there are firearms in the Mario universe. Bet you didn't expect that, huh? He owns an enormous amount of weapons and pieces of armor, many of which are magic in nature, and most of which he built himself. I suppose that's what you do when you have an IQ of 9,800.

Bowser has giant cannonballs, giant spiked cannonballs, throwing hammers, mechanized robot Koopas that can explode, Bob-ombs that will destroy entire buildings, and his very own version of Karubi's Shoe, an impenetrable shoe which he can hop around in and crushes everything in his way. His Lightplunger stuns foes who touch it, and his cold gun will freeze foes solid in less than a second. But his most powerful normal weapon is the Black Hole Bob-omb. A single one of these will explode with enough force to create an abyss that could consume a city block. He also has shown the ability to use any of Mario's power-ups for himself, though, for fairness's sake and because we technically can't prove he's able to use anything else, we'll only give him the ones he's already used before. This includes the Super Leaf, which gives him a powerful tail whip and the ability to fly, the Super Bell, which makes him into Meowser, who is larger and faster than Bowser and can climb up the steepest of walls and mountains, and the Fire Flower, which enhances his already great pyrokinetic abilities. The Super Star grants him temporary invincibility, and the Double Cherry will clone Bowser exactly, with each clone having a mind of its own. Bowser can even combine different power-ups to receive both effects, something even Mario can't do.

But none of those are the weapons he normally uses. He has two main weapons - his Giant Hammer, and his Magic Wand. The Giant Hammer is just that - an enormous, magically imbued hammer that can crush castles, which he uses with great skill. His other weapon, the Magic Wand, is far more…versatile. Built by Kamek to hone certain magical abilities, this wand actually gives Bowser access to several magic spells he otherwise wouldn't have. With it, he can summon, transform, and levitate other objects and creatures, and can even heal himself. It can fire concussive homing blasts or evaporation blasts, which take advantage of the magical nature of the wand in order to unleash a blast that physically destroys the molecular composition of whatever the blast hits - basically, unless you have wards guarding against it, no matter how powerful you are, if the blast hits you, you die. Of course, in addition to his weapons, Bowser has several pieces of armor that magically enhance him. His Wicked Shell has extendable spikes that can launch themselves out of the shell, only for new ones to immediately grow back, and is supposedly impenetrable. To top it off, he has multiple spares of this shell, and, when in a pinch, can pull one out and throw it at his opponent. His Power Band+ and Power Fangs X each cast a magical effect that increases his strength by 20%, and the Economy Ring reduces the amount of Star Power he consumes by half. What does that mean, exactly? Hold on, I'll get to that when we reach weaknesses.

He keeps all these weapons and pieces of armor in a little pocket of dimensional storage that he can access at any time via magic. Under the tutelage of Kamek, Bowser has learned to use his inherit abilities as a Star Child to incredible degrees, giving him a lot of magical power and some…stranger abilities. This eight-foot turtle can turn invisible, teleport short distances, and transform into other objects and people. He can create and manipulate fire as effectively as Mario, leading to his trademark breath attack or fireballs, control electricity to some extent, and manipulate the air currents around him with…interesting results. He vibrates the air to create weaponized soundwaves, inhales with enough force to move giant foes that would weigh several tons, and, if he's just really pissed off, he can literally breathe a tornado into existence. Yes, that's right, he can create a tornado by breathing too hard.

But that's hardly the extent of his powers. His physical abilities are tied into the magical realm, and because his magical power is off the charts, he has absurd levels of strength and durability, making him able to lift castles and survive planet-level explosions with ease. He's so durable, he once had all his skin melted off, and he still survived. Oh, and he can move at speeds exceeding that of sound. His body also naturally adapts to his environment, changing around what he can and can't live without as he needs it. This allows him to breathe in space and underwater, survive falling into a sun, and even slightly adjust his personality and speaking patterns to better fit the world he's in. And when this kicks into high gear, things don't work out for his enemies. When his life is threatened to a large extreme, or he gets incredibly annoyed, or he absorbs a large amount of energy and power, he transforms into Giant Bowser, a huge version of himself the size of a mountain. His strength and durability increases in proportion to this size change, as well - according to Mario & Luigi: Dream Team's statistics, Giant Bowser is over nine times stronger than normal Bowser and significantly tougher, though he is much slower. Giant Bowser has fought Dreamy Luigi, defeated an enormous robot castle powered by dark magic, and once did battle with Mario inside a black hole by using entire planets as weapons. But this still isn't Bowser's most powerful form.

Every Star Child has the ability to, when under extreme duress or granted a boost of extra magical power, enter a specific "Super Form" in which their physical attributes increase tremendously and can even change around completely. Bowser's Super Form is Giga Bowser, a giant dragon-turtle-ox thing that's twice as big as Bowser and holds ten times his strength, speed, and durability. Giga Bowser is the one form Bowser has yet to master, and so isn't completely in control of - but it's still an enormously powerful move that almost always wins him the day. But even without these forms or his weapons, Bowser's still done some incredible things.

Bowser is strong enough to hold up an enormous section of a collapsing castle (which would weight around 300,000 tons), fast enough to dodge lightning, and durable enough to take a point-blank supernova and survive. All by himself, he defeated one hundred powerful samurai warriors in a row, bested Super O'Chunks, who was supposed to be stronger, faster, and tougher than him, and invaded Star Haven and stole their most prized possession. He's one-shotted Luigi, Toad, Peach, and the king of Giant Land, defeated an entire army with a single spell, punched a guy hard enough to send him crashing into the moon and, when he and Peach were eventually married (don't ask), the tumultuous bond between them took the form of a heart that could destroy reality. That's right; his feelings for Peach helped create a universe-destroying weapon. Still without help or weapons, he fought and defeated a more powerful, evil version of Luigi, captured Mario three times, and scared off the armies of hell itself with a single roar. On multiple occasions, he's outmatched Mario's strength, run faster than soundwaves, and survived falling into black holes. He fought and defeated his more powerful, evil self, helped to defeat Super Dimentio, who could effortlessly create and destroy dimensions, and once took over most of the universe. But that's just his physical feats; he's also built space-age devices exclusively using materials from the stone-age, built a device that was capable of inhaling entire galaxies, and once built his own Death Star and used it to take over half a galaxy in single day. He's also surprisingly knowledgeable about human nature and politics. He almost won a democratic election against Princess Peach (even though it was exclusively her people that were voting) and caused a planet-wide civil war to begin just with a little paint and a couple of well-placed words. He even once outwitted Herlock Sholmes, the greatest detective in the galaxy. But beyond all of that, the feats he's most proud of are his very few, but very real, victories against Mario.

And the fact that they're very few has just as much to do with Bowser's weaknesses as they have to do with Mario's strengths. Bowser may seem almost intelligent at moments (he does, after all, have an IQ over sixty times higher than Einstein's), but he lacks any form of common sense. He puts his self-destruct buttons right out in the open where anybody can get to them, for example. Also, he has self-destruct buttons. He's illiterate, doesn't understand basic addition principles, and will repeat the exact same battle strategy hundreds of times, even if it has never worked once - and even though he did outwit Herlock Sholmes once, he was destroyed in mental battles against him several times afterward. His ego is huge, to the point where even though he knows every one of Mario's weaknesses, he refuses to take advantage of them. He's a sore loser, incredibly lazy, and exceptionally clumsy. His own plans seem to backfire constantly, his power-ups vanish after a single blow, and he's been defeated and even one-shotted by virtually every other main Mario character, including Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, and Kamek - multiple times. However, perhaps his greatest weakness is actually the very thing that makes him so strong: Star Power, also known as SP. Star Power is a form of magic some beings can use, and is where all the Star Children's magic comes from. The problem is, each Star Child only has a finite amount, and Bowser's supply will only last him around half an hour if he's constantly using magic. It regenerates over time, but it takes far longer than is viable for a Death Battle, so his pool here is really all he has. Luckily, his Economy Ring effectively doubles his supply, so can last much longer, but if he runs out, all he's left with is his own strength. And all of this is not mentioning that it's been over a hundred years, and he still has yet to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom permanently.

However, that may be because he no longer really wants to. After fighting for so long and going on many adventures together, Mario and Bowser actually became friends to some extent. Neither will ever admit it, but they no longer fight because of Bowser's thirst for power or Mario's love for Peach, but because, well, that's just what they do. When they aren't fighting, Peach will bake a cake for Bowser, and Bowser will invite Mario over for a party. The three even occasionally seek advice from each other - Peach played a major role in restoring Bowser and his mother's relationship. I'm not joking; this tidbit is canonically documented. After fighting for so long, Bowser can finally accept things the way they are.

Maybe that's what he's really most proud of.

" _You're disgusting, Koopa!" shouts Princess Peach, "Mean, cruel-hearted, vicious, and uncivilized!"_

 _Bowser smiles sweetly and grasps Peach's cage with both hands. "Aren't I, though? But enough of this sweet talk." He turns forward and calls out to the crowd gathered below. "Listen close, you repulsive wretches! It's time to play 'Auction the Princess!'"_

 _There are cheers from below as Peach gasps in horror._

 _Bowser speaks up again. "Do I hear one thousand gold coins? Remember, the money goes to my favorite charity: Me!" He laughs._

 **Bowser:**

Name: Bowser Koopa

Species: Koopa Kid

Age: 150+

Height: 8'7" / 261.6 cm

Occupation: Koopa King, Martial Artist, Politician, Rap Artist, many others

IQ: 9,800

High-school dropout

Owns a coliseum and his own TV Show

Married to Princess Peach, technically

 **Items/Weapons:**

Magic Wands (Transmogrification, Size Manipulation, Evaporation, ect.)

Giant Hammers

Normal Hammers

Spiked Balls

Giant Iron Balls

Lightplunger

Bob-Ombs

Cold Gun

Giant Shells

Double Cherry

Super Leaf

Super Star

Super Bell

Karubi's Shoe

Wicked Shell

Economy Ring

Power Band+

Power Fangs X

 **Abilities:**

Adaptability

Pyrokinesis

Air Manipulation (Soundwaves, Inhale, Tornadoes with breath)

Teleportation

Invisibility

Transformation

Size Manipulation

Materialization

Dimensional Storage

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Can use and combine Power-Ups

Technical Genius (built giant weapons and vehicles with stone-age materials, and once built a planet-destroying super weapon)

Mastered Boxing, Karate, Ninjutsu, Jujutsu, Wrestling, Kendo, Judo

Giga Bowser (Super Form)

 **Feats:**

Built a device that inhaled entire galaxies

Fought and defeated a robot castle

Fought and defeated his evil, more powerful self

Fought and defeated an evil, more powerful version of Luigi

Survived a Supernova

Survived a Black Hole (multiple times)

Survived being thrown into the sun

Once fought an entire battle using planets as weapons INSIDE a Black Hole

Defeated an entire army with a single spell

Punched someone hard enough to send him flying into the moon

Regularly bathes in lava and acid

Took over at least fourteen kingdoms, nearly took over an additional twenty

Once outwitted Herlock Sholmes (but was then destroyed by him several times after)

Built his own Death Star and conquered half the galaxy with it

Took over the real world three times

Competed with and nearly defeated Mario's Plumb Fu

One-shotted Luigi, Toad, Peach, various powerful ancient threats, and the king of Giant Land

Has captured Mario, Luigi, and Peach several dozen times

Almost won a democratic election against Princess Peach

Almost created a Planetary Civil War

Held up a collapsing castle (which would weigh around 300,000 tons)

Helped defeat Super Dimentio, who could effortlessly create and destroy dimensions

Defeated Super O'Chunks by himself

Invaded Star Haven and stole the Star Rod by himself

Defeated 100 powerful samurai warriors from another dimension

Defeated Mario a few times. Technically.

 **Weaknesses:**

Lacks any common sense

A complete idiot

Clumsy

Lazy

Absurdly huge Ego

Sore Loser

Moves slowly in comparison to Mario & friends

Power-Ups vanish with a single good blow

Own plans and ideas seem to backfire all the time

Defeated and one-shotted by Mario, Luigi, Toad, Peach, Yoshi, Kamek

Defeated by Babies. Several times.

…

 **King Dedede:**

Long after the Galaxy Soldier War, many looked for a place to call home. The war had reached most of the universe and destroyed entire galaxies, and there were only a few who survived the carnage - and the most powerful of them was Meta Knight, the greatest Star Warrior to ever live (except one, but we'll get to that). Knowing that the demon Nightmare still lived and sought revenge specifically against him, Meta Knight fled to Popstar, the brightest star in the sky, a place naturally filled with so much good energy that Nightmare would never want to set foot there - and that's where Meta Knight met King Dedede, of the Dedede Clan, and that's when King Dedede's life became absolutely nuts.

You see, after the war ended, Nightmare spent the next few thousand years forming the most powerful creature in existence, Kirby, and released him to mature a few decades after Meta Knight landed on Popstar. Then, to build up funds, Nightmare began creating and selling monsters to different planets across the galaxy, and it wasn't long before King Dedede fell in love with the process of buying, raising, and using monsters for his own ends. But things went terribly wrong for both of them when Kirby's pod sensed a monster Dedede had ordered, thought Nightmare was reawakening the army, and crash-landed him on Popstar. When Kirby met the King, Dedede made quite an impression on him. On his face, more specifically. With a hammer. After that rocky start, Kirby still wanted to be friends with King Dedede (and literally everyone else), but Dedede quickly grew jealous of all the attention Kirby received, and annoyed at the fact that he kept killing all his monsters, and swore himself to be Kirby's mortal enemy forever. That…didn't work out well for him.

Still, if you're going to fight against the universe's strongest being for eternity, you better have some good things up your sleeve, and that King Dedede does. A tenacious and dangerous fighter, King Dedede has educated himself in Karate, Sumo, Capoeira, and Wing Chun and continually proves himself against masters of each martial art. He also tried to learn Ninjutsu and Tai Chi, but could never quite get them down. Because of this, he combined the moves he could get down along with some Capoeira and Sumo to form a brand new martial art that he constantly uses, and it's all brought together by the trademark Dedede Hammer.

We'll get to the hammer in a moment, but for now, Dedede has several other weapons he will often find useful in battle, including spears, swords, and steel throwing fans, each of which he can use with ease. Besides that, Dedede holds Balloon Bombs, powerful bombs that can each blow up a building. A Cracker is a lightweight portable cannon that fires explosive rounds at enemies, the Dash Shoe triples his speed and agility, an Invisibility Stone turns him invisible, and the Prism Shield creates a rainbow barrier that absorbs projectiles. Let's not forget the Stomper Boot, a supposedly impenetrable shoe that Dedede can ride around in and crush everything in his way with. An Invincibility Candy makes him temporarily invincible, and the Maxim Tomato completely heals his wounds. But his most powerful normal weapon is the Dynamite, which destroys areas the size of city blocks and leaves huge craters in the earth.

But none of these are what he normally uses. That would be the Dedede Hammer. Forged out of Dedede's own Star Power (yes, Star Power exists in the Kirby universe, too, and it does work the exact same way), this hammer is unbreakable and is known to break other things that are unbreakable. A full-powered blow from it is one of the few things in the universe that will hurt Kirby, and it has stood up to gods and demons with ease. It can create explosions, and, if he ever loses it, King Dedede can summon it right back in his hand out of nowhere. Even if, somehow, it is eventually destroyed, he can create another at the cost of a small chunk of Star Power. However, it may be well worth it. The hammer is warded against every single type of magic, and as such doubles as a fantastic magical shield, blocking and bouncing back magical beams and attacks. It's broken through titanium doors without effort, crushed mountain-sized creatures, and once, when Kirby borrowed it to defeat a possessed Escargoon, it broke through a shell that was literally created by Nightmare to be unbreakable. With a single swipe, it has cleared out monsters that can destroy planets and entire battalions of Scarfies. And it can even utilize Dedede's Star Power and energy to charge up more powerful blows; the longer it charges, the stronger the hit. Who needs anything else when you have a weapon this powerful that you're this good with?

King Dedede, apparently, because that's not all he has. Nope, we haven't even touched on the magical side of things. Oh, yeah, Dedede keeps all of this in a pocket dimension that he can access via magic. Which is what I'll now be talking about. As one of the very few non-Star Warriors in the Kirby world to be able to use Star Power, King Dedede has trained himself to use this however he can to get a leg up on Kirby. By now he has so much practice with using his Star Power that most of his magical arsenal takes almost nothing away. This arsenal includes the ability to create and manipulate electricity, ice, fire, control the air and winds in a few different ways. By vibrating the air around him, he can make weaponized soundwaves, by twirling his hammer around at incredible speeds, he can create tornadoes, and, after what is stated to be countless hours of training, he's managed to exactly copy Kirby's Inhale ability. This ability allows him to suck in everything from an acre of forest to an entire army and throw them into his personal pocket dimension. Now, unlike Kirby's inhale ability, this doesn't immediately kill them and only restores the soul if Kirby so wishes it. Rather, because of King Dedede's indirect relationship with Star Power, they're just trapped there, endlessly, until he decides to spit them out again. Oh, and he can fly.

Oh, you think that's the limit of his abilities? Shame on you. King Dedede's strength, speed, and durability levels are insane. The guy has moved castles, taken planet-level explosions to the face, and even broken the sound barrier. Multiple times! He's so durable, in fact, that he once ate a curry so hot, it literally incinerated his entire body - and he still somehow survived. He can create clones of himself, each with their own movements and thought patterns, and change his size at will. He can shrink to be the size of an ant, or grow to be the size of a mountain, and either way, his strength, speed, and durability increases and decreases proportionally (growing bigger, less speed, more power; growing smaller, more speed, less power).

But Dedede doesn't have to rely on his magic or extra weapons to prove himself on the battlefield. This yellow penguin has defeated Queen Sectonia and Drawcia by himself, both of whom were powerful enough to move stars and easily alter the fabric of reality. He helped defeat the all-powerful Magolor, who could effortlessly create and destroy dimensions, and then did it again all by himself. He's fought and defeated a more powerful, evil version of Meta Knight, and the original Meta Knight, too. He defeated Knuckle Joe, the most powerful monster hunter in the universe, and once even Galacta Knight, who had previously destroyed an entire universe over time. He's held up Blocky, a giant stone creature who weighed hundreds of thousands of tons, tanked supernova-level blasts and falling into black holes, and outpaced Kracko, who is canonically stated to move as fast as lightning. Oh, and he dodged lightning. He's one of only a couple fighters who aren't omnipotent that still outmatch the Star Warrior sense (which is basically an improved Spider Sense), and, hidden under the name "The Masked King," became champion of the underground fighting ring on Popstar. He threw Kirby with enough force to go into outer space, one-shotted Luigi, took an explosion of antimatter and lived, and equaled Meta Knight's reaction time, who can dodge multiple faster than light projectiles at once. He's defeated multiple monsters and even entire armies at once, had a dip in a lava-filled meteor, and fought and defeated his more powerful, evil self. And that's just his physical feats: Dedede's a tactician, and a surprisingly good one. He seeks out weaknesses in his enemies and exploits them - like the time he exploited Wario's greed to save the lives of several Smash Bros. heroes. He's invented television, comics, a printing press, and magical medallions that bring the dead back to life. He plays chess during his free time, and even worked his way to the top and became the world's best Avalanche player. But beyond all of that, the feats he's most proud of are his very few, but very real, victories against Kirby.

And the fact that they're very few has just as much to do with King Dedede's weaknesses as they have to do with Kirby's strengths. While he is intelligent at moments, he lacks any kind of common sense - and a brain. No, seriously, King Dedede literally does not have a brain. He's also illiterate, unable to complete simple addition problems, and will repeat an idea multiple times, even if it's never worked in the past. Beyond that, he's lazy at times and considers himself above nearly all others. His plans have a tendency to blow up in his face, and he's highly susceptible to mind-control. And even though he became champion fighter of Popstar and the world's champion Avalanche player, Kirby stole these titles from him shortly afterward. He's been one-shotted by both Kirby and Meta Knight, and even though he regularly stands up to extraordinarily powerful beings and wins, he's a coward, afraid of even the smallest of monsters. And, just like Bowser, he will eventually run out of Star Power, and with it goes most of his arsenal. Let's also not forget that it's been over a hundred years and he's still not much closer to being more powerful and well-liked than Kirby.

However, that may be because he no longer really wants to be. After fighting for so long and going on many adventures together, Kirby and Dedede actually became good friends. While Dedede doesn't like to admit it, he does care about Kirby and most of the others in his kingdom - he admitted so himself at one point after believing Kirby to have died. At this point in the story, the only times Dedede and Kirby fight are for fun, and both have completely forgiven the other - heck, Kirby's been officially declared a Knight of Dreamland and is also King Dedede's personal chef, so they must be getting along pretty well.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was what King Dedede was really most proud of.

 _King Dedede sits in his personal tank-like jeep, cannon pointed at the old god of wisdom, Kabu. "That's trash you're talkin', Kabu!" The king shouted at him. "Ain't no such person as Kirby!"_

" _That's right!" chipped in Escargoon. "You're full of Kabu-loney."_

 _"Kabu can see the future," the enormous idol insisted._

 _King Dedede sniggered. "Then why don't you predict what's gonna happen when I push this here button?"_

" _I predict you will not push it."_

 _King Dedede moved his hand to the trigger. "Yeah, well, I predict you're dead wrong."_

 **King Dedede:**

Name: Daio Dedede

Species: Penguin of the Dedede Clan

Age: 130+

Height: 2'1 / 63.5 cm

Occupation: King of Dreamland, Martial Artist, Professional Avalanche Player

IQ: 0

17,052nd Ruler of Dream Land

Owns a coliseum and his own TV Show

Second-favorite sport is golf

 **Items/Weapons:**

Dedede Hammer

Invisibility Stone

Invincibility Candy

Balloon Bomb

Dynamite

Cracker

Stomper Boot

Maxim Tomato

Prism Shield

 **Abilities:**

Controls Fire, Ice, Electricity, Wind

Sonic Shockwaves

Inhale

Can create tornadoes

Can clone himself

Size Manipulation

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Dimensional Storage

Flight

 **Feats:**

Defeated Queen Sectonia, Drawcia, Knuckle Joe, Galacta Knight by himself

Fought and defeated Meta Knight

Fought and defeated his evil, more powerful self

Fought and defeated an evil, more powerful version of Meta Knight

Survived several supernova-level blasts

Survived a Black Hole (multiple times)

Survived being dipped into a meteor similar to the sun

Defeated an entire army with a single swing

Threw someone hard enough to send him flying into outer space

Can bathe in lava and acid

Invented some stuff

Outran Kracko

Took over the whole planet and several others

Outwitted several deities

Competed with and nearly defeated Kirby's Star Warrior Sense

One-shotted Luigi and various powerful ancient threats

Has captured Kirby, Meta Knight, and many others several times

Held up Blocky (who would weigh at least 500,000 tons)

Helped defeat Magolor, who could effortlessly create and destroy dimensions, then later defeated him alone

Stole the Star Rod and broke it by himself

Defeated several planet-level monsters

Defeated Kirby a few times. Technically.

 **Weaknesses:**

Lacks any common sense

A complete idiot

Clumsy

Huge Ego

Sore Loser

Own plans and ideas seem to backfire all the time

Defeated and one-shotted by Kirby, Meta Knight

Cowardice

Defeated by babies

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all! It's time for a Death Battle!

…

It was a beautiful day in Dreamland. The birds were sleeping, the flowers were sleeping, the Waddle Dees were sleeping…yeah, everything was sleeping - until a giant, blue wormhole opened up in the middle of the sky, and out flew an enormous turtle-like creature riding inside a white hovercraft with a clown face on it. He glanced at a wand in his hand.

"Hah hah hah! This new wand is great! And I have a whole new dimension to take over, thanks to Kam- I mean, thanks to me! I did all the work!" He shouted, despite nobody being around to hear him.

He crossed his eyes and stared at the horizon. Strange. This place looked…familiar. He felt for sure he'd been here before, but Kamek had claimed that the dimension he had entered was something none of them had seen before, filled with strange and unfamiliar creatures. He slowly lowered the Koopa Clown Car lower and lower until he could easily make out the creatures sleeping below him.

"Well," he grunted, "they're strange, but way too familiar. Darn it all, I'm in Dreamland! I'll have to have Kamek recalibrate this wand's dimensional magic." He laughed. "But while I'm here, they're no way I'm leaving without trying some of those delicious Dreamland pastries!" He laughed and moved his Clown Car up again before speeding off.

…

"Here you go, sire!" Kawasaki happily exclaimed, putting a plate filled with different desserts in front of the Koopa King. He wasn't supposed to call anyone "sire" except for Dedede, but Kawasaki was a little more afraid of Bowser than Dedede - and Bowser paid for his food.

Bowser grunted and dove in, shoveling dessert after dessert into his mouth. A couple tables away, somebody was talking about him.

"I don't like it when he's here," Tiff confided in Tuff.

"Well, whatsa matter with 'im?" Tuff asked, sucking on the world largest lollipop. "He doesn't beat us to a pulp, and I'm pretty happy to leave it there."

"It's just the way he looks and acts," Tiff explained. "I don't know…he looks just like one of eNeMe's monsters."

"I thought 'is name was Nightmare," Tuff replied in his own thinking kind of way. "And ain't you the one who always says not to judge a whatsit by its cover?"

"He also gets along way too well with Dedede."

"Who cares? Dedede's our friend now, remember?"

"He's going to have to do a lot more than destroy a few monsters to earn my trust," Tiff huffed.

Tuff eyed the Koopa King as he rung up another plate. "At least he pays Kawasaki. Dedede doesn't do that. Besides, Kirby likes him."

"Kirby likes everybody," scoffed Tiff.

Indeed, it was true, and Kirby was right there, ready to prove it. He hopped up on the chair across from Bowser and grinned. "Hiiii!"

Bowser pointed a claw at him. "Look here, puffball. I know all about you. You're cute, but if you try to steal any of this food, you've got another thing coming."

"Poyo?" Kirby tilted his body and stared in wonderment as Bowser continued to eat.

"You heard me." Bowser grabbed his glass of water and drank heavily. When he put it back down again, he saw Kirby smiling innocently. Too innocently. He glanced around his plate. He was sure he was missing an éclair or two. Or had the chef just not gotten his order right? He looked back at the kitchen door for a moment, and when he turned back to his plate, all six scoops of Ice Cream were gone. Bowser stared hard at Kirby. "You did this, didn't you? You don't steal my food. Not while I'm here! Well, you, uh, don't steal my food anyway, but especially not when I'm here!"

Kirby just looked at him curiously, as if puzzled by what he was talking about. Bowser kept his eyes trained on the puffball for a moment, then purposefully turned his head as if looking at something else - then snapped it right back, just in time to catch Kirby halfway across the table, shoving three donuts into his mouth at once. "Why you little-" Bowser roared, standing up. Kirby jumped up guiltily and ran away.

"Come here!" Bowser shouted loud enough to make everyone else in the restaurant cover their ears. Kirby paid no heed, but darted out the door.

"I'll wipe the floor with you, you little freak!" Bowser bellowed, then paused. He dropped several gold coins on the table, then ran out the door after Kirby.

"Where did you go?" He eyed the town around him. It showed no hint of a pink puffball hiding in this area, but he knew there was one. He stepped out onto the street - then heard brakes screeching and saw a golden car swerve in order not to hit him. Instead, it slammed right into a tree, and ejected the two occupants from their seats rather harshly.

The first one to pop up was a snail-like creature with a moustache. "Sire," he moaned. "We can't afford for this to keep happening. We run into trees everywhere we go! Can't we take a different vehicle?"

"Nonsense, Escargoon!" shouted the other one in a heavy southern accent. "That there racecar is in-vally-ble! There's not another one in the universe!"

"Then must we crash it into everything we see?" pleaded Escargoon.

Kirby temporarily forgotten about, Bowser strolled over. "Well, if it isn't the fat penguin king himself."

"Oh ho ho!" Dedede exclaimed, jumping up. "Is that Bowser I see? How's it feel to still be rulin' over that kingdom of useless turtles?"

"Better than ruling over a kingdom of useless clowns," Bowser replied good-naturedly. "Haven't seen you in some time!"

"Bowser, boy," Dedede told him as he wiped off his robe. "Things have changed 'round here. Why'd you come and visit us all a sudden like that?"

"Dimensional mishap," Bowser grunted.

"Heh heh heh! Happens to the best of us. And the worst!"

"Talking about yourself again, Dedede? I'm pretty sure that's unhealthy," Bowser joked.

"That's not the only unhealthy thing around here," Escargoon muttered.

"And you, snail guy!" Bowser directed his attention to him. "Why ain't you rigged up something for me and 'im to visit more often? Aren't you supposed to be a genius or something?"

"Because," Escargot snapped, "You're the only one in this universe that appreciates my talents! If tubby here would give me something to work with-"

"Tubby?!" shouted King Dedede. "I'll give ya something' at work with for the rest'o'your life!" He pulled out his hammer and prepared to clobber Escargoon over the head with it.

Seeing the hammer reminded Bowser of something. "Hey, Dedede, we never really finished that fight, did we?"

Dedede stopped mid-swing, much to Escargoon's relief, and paused to think about it. "No, we didn't. Wanna finish it now?" He grinned and held up his hammer. He knew both he and Bowser were eager to see which of them was truly stronger.

Bowser patted his stomach. "Nah, too much sweets in here right now. Tonight?"

"At the Dedede Cahl-ih-see-um! To the death?"

"I'll bring 1-Ups."

"I'll bring a crowd."

"Then it's settled." Bowser grinned. "Meantime, I've got a puffball to kill."

Dedede laughed. "Yeah, ya get used to it."

…

That night, at the Dedede Coliseum, the two were on stage together.

"I thought you said you would bring a crowd!" Bowser reminded Dedede.

"Oh, they're a buncha wusses. Said they'd had enough of monster fights. Ain't no such thing as enough!" Dedede laughed. "But hey, one person done showed up!"

Kirby waved happily from the stands.

Bowser looked at Dedede in disbelief. "WHY?"

"Shut your facehole, and hand me a 1-Up," Dedede demanded.

Grumbling, Bowser did as he asked. "You're going to need it."

Dedede readied his hammer. "We'll see."

 **-FIGHT!-**

Bowser jumped toward Dedede, curling his left hand into a fist and bringing it down. Dedede lowered his hammer and readied himself to throw it up into Bowser's stomach - only to realize he'd fallen right into the first trap laid out this battle. Bowser curled himself into his shell. Dedede tried to bring his hammer up in time, but Bowser's shell moved far faster than Bowser normally did, and Dedede hadn't been ready for the change in speed. The shell smashed directly into Dedede, forcing him into the ground. The shell bounced off Dedede's stomach, and Bowser popped out. He dug his claws into the ground, stopping his momentum. He stuck his leg out and spun it, hitting it into King Dedede and bouncing him back. He breathed out a wall of fire, blocking Dedede's way to him - only for a burst of air to power through and snuff out the flames. Bowser sped toward Dedede, throwing his fist at him, but Dedede simply ducked under the blow and hit Bowser's nose with the back of his hand. The surprised Bowser was pushed back and retaliated by ducking into his shell again and spinning it toward Dedede, who now timed this carefully and swung his hammer at the exact right moment, sending Bowser's shell crashing into the stands and destroying several seats.

Bowser moaned and rose as Kirby clapped excitedly. He made a massive jump, landing hard back onto the arena, and pulled out his own Giant Hammer.

"That's a pretty good hammer you got there," Bowser laughed. "Let's see how it matches up against mine! This baby can destroy castles, crush-"

Dedede smashed his hammer into Bowser's and turned it into a pile of dust.

"Huh. Didn't see that coming."

Bowser dodged a blow from the hammer, shifted to the right, and grabbed Dedede's arm. He rose him into the sky and threw him back down into the ground of the arena. He launched himself into the sky with a might jump, and rose his legs up to do a full-on Bowser Bomb on top of Dedede. Dedede rolled out of the way just in time, charged up his hammer, and slammed it into Bowser, knocking him flat on his back. "Heh heh heh! That's how you cook a- hey!" A spiked ball bounced off Dedede's head. He rubbed the spot where it hit before noticing a hundred of the same spiked balls heading toward him. Dedede gulped and held out his Prism Shield. Calmly, and directly, he kept moving it and blocking the projectiles, each one evaporating the moment it hit the shield, until he'd hit every flying ball out of the air - only to be surprised by a punch in the face from Bowser. He retaliated immediately with a sweeping kick that knocked Bowser off-balance, and dropped several Balloon Bombs all over the place before ducking out. But Bowser recovered in time, inhaled the bombs, and spat them at Dedede. Dedede smashed them all into the air with a swing of the hammer, and they all exploded colorfully.

"Not bad, flock freak," declared Bowser, "but I bet you can't keep up with two of me!" He pulled out a double cherry and used it, creating an exact clone of himself next to him.

"Don't make bets that're sure to lose!" replied the king of Dreamland. He focused slightly - and out popped a new Dedede, just like the original. "I can pull that trick, too!"

The four flew at each other and things got…confusing. Essentially everything just degraded to a street brawl, and everyone was going for everyone. When the dust cleared several minutes later, There was one Bowser and one Dedede remaining, the two clones having spent their energy and dissolved.

"Okay," breathed Bowser heavily. "Time for some new tactics." He brought out his wand and fired a magic blast at Dedede, who quickly deflected it with his hammer.

"Hey!" Bowser shouted. "How come that paperweight didn't turn into a poodle?!"

"Give me a little credit, will ya?" King Dedede laughed.

Bowser angrily tossed out several more spells, but each one was redirected by the hammer. "My turn!" he shouted. Dedede pulled out a decent-sized cannon and aimed several shots directly at Bowser.

"Don't count on that," Bowser yelled back. He held back a punch, and as he threw it, time seemed to slow. Suddenly, all five cannonballs that had been shot were in one place, right in front of Bowser, and a powerful hit scattered them all - including one that went right into the mouth of the Cracker and tore it all up. Dedede swung his hammer with fierce force, and a wave of sonic energy buzzed out towards Bowser, but he just smiled and clapped. The force of the clap shook the arena and created a new wave of sonic energy that met the other one. Both clashed and created a sonic boom that sent both Bowser and Dedede reeling - and Kirby laughing.

While Dedede was still struggling, Bowser immediately teleported behind him and landed a powerful uppercut, knocking Dedede back with considerable force. He began teleporting rapidly, to areas all around Dedede, each time landing a blow, then vanishing before Dedede could hit him Feeling his Star Power depleting a little faster than he'd like, Bowser decided to end the barrage with another very powerful blow, this one to Dedede's back, face-planting him into the ground. Dedede gasped and wheezed before trying to pull himself up. Then he was suddenly hit by what felt like a wave of pure frost, and he felt like his entire body was slowly being frozen in solid ice - which it was.

After the Cold Gun's blast had finished, Bowser calmly walked over and set down a Black Pit Bob-omb next to the frozen Dedede. The ice around him was already beginning to break due to Dedede's magic, but he wouldn't be able to get out of the way in time. Bowser quickly teleported into the stands, and sat down to watch. Seconds later, the explosion went off. It engulfed the entire arena, turning it into this enormous black pit - with a rainbow-colored penguin flying above it.

"That twerp…using invincibility on me like that…" Bowser growled. "Good thing I have something to match." He clenched a Super Leaf, and suddenly grew raccoon ears and a tail. He effortlessly flew up to where Dedede was and used a Super Star - he'd fought Mario enough times to know how dangerous it was to fight an invincibility mode when you don't have one yourself. The two fought evenly for a short bit, until the invincibility wore off for each and Bowser grabbed a Super Bell. His features became distinctively cat-featured, and he was faster. Much faster than he was before.

Dedede was suddenly being whaled on from all sides. Bowser wasn't teleporting, he'd just used some kind of power-up and was…faster now. Dedede tried to block the blows, but there was no way for him to keep up. He knew he just needed one hit on Bowser to disable the power-ups, but he couldn't get that hit in.

 _Fine_ , he thought, _I'll use it_. He immediately pulled out and absorbed the Dash Shoe, and everything seemed to be in slow motion. He saw each of Bowser's punched coming well before it hit him, and he was easily able to dodge. The speed boost wouldn't last forever, though, so he needed to make use of it. He pulled out his hammer and slammed it, hard, into Bowser's stomach. He saw both the raccoon and cat features vanish. Then he went to town, hitting Bowser at all angles on all sides as the two fell together. He ended the combo off with a terrifyingly strong downward hit that sent Bowser careening into the deep void.

He floated outwards and set down just outside of the Black Pit. "Well, that's the end'a'it."

Then Bowser teleported right next to him.

Bowser barred his teeth. "No way, birdbrain." He turned invisible, scooted to the right, and delivered a mighty shove, knocking Dedede down into the pit. When Dedede began floating up, Bowser jumped on top of him and barreled him down towards the bottom. He saw Dedede taking out a clear stone, immediately recognized it, and smashed it to pieces with a single kick. "Sorry, chump. There's only room for one invisible powerhouse here- huh?" He felt Dedede vanish beneath his feet, and then he was just free-falling, with no apparent end. He glanced around quickly, and noticed a much smaller Dedede floating away calmly. "Hey! I'm not done with you!"

Bowser teleported outside the hole. His head was spinning slightly, but he shook it off. He had to keep his Star Power reserves in check; all this teleporting wasn't good for it. Neither was remaining invisible, but…

King Dedede landed safely and regained his normal size. He laughed, proud of himself for outsmarting the big, dumb turt- "AGH!" Dedede was thrown back slightly bu a strong punch, and then immediately hit with another one from the other side. "Dag nabbit! Whatsthis with all the teleportin'?!"

Bowser offered no reply, but he did offer several more invisible punches. Dedede inhaled, closed his eyes, and focused. Hey may not be a Star Warrior, but he'd faced invisible, teleporting foes before. He needed just one point of reference…

A single spot of dust to his northwest moved.

There.

King Dedede turned and caught the next punch, then heaved the invisible weight behind it over his shoulder and into the pit again. Right away, Bowser appeared next to him.

"For the love of…stop throwing me in the pit! It's really getting on my-"

Dedede tripped him and bounced him off his foot into the pit.

Bowser reappeared. "ON MY NERVES!" He breathed in, trying to calm himself. "Look, we both know that sending the other guy into the pit's useless. I can teleport, and you can fly. So can we be done with the pit? Can we just make that off-limits?" He stuck out his hand.

"Oh…fine." Dedede was a little grumpy above that idea, but he shook Bowser's hand anyway.

And Bowser flung him over his shoulder into the pit.

"Hey!" Dedede shouted after floating back up.

Bowser shrugged. "Sorry, couldn't help it. Seriously, though, no more pit."

"Yeah, yeah." Dedede shot out a wave of electricity from his hands, engulfing Bowser. Bowser cried out in pain and anger, before his tough skin managed to adapt to the exact volts being used on him. Grinning, he rose his hands and threw them forward, sending every bit of the electricity back at Dedede. Dedede immediately held out his hammer and absorbed the electricity.

Exhausted, Dedede took out a Maxim Tomato and threw it up into the air, ready to catch it in his mouth. Then Bowser punched him out of the way and readied himself to catch it instead, but Dedede hit him once more and the tomato landed between them. The two immediately began inhaling, creating two powerful vacuums for the tomato to travel through. It kept switching between one or the other, never fully picking a side, until a third vacuum suddenly joined in, stronger than both of the others, and the tomato flew right into a smiling Kirby's mouth.

Both turned to him. "I'll going to kill that punk!" Bowser threatened. He took out a Bob-omb and lobbed it at Kirby - but it was met in the air with a Balloon Bomb. Both exploded in the air.

"Thissis our fight, Bowser," Dedede reminded him. "Ya can kill 'im later!"

Bowser scowled. "Fine!" He took out a Karubi Shoe that quickly enlarged itself, and jumped inside.

"Hey!" Dedede laughed. "I got one of those, too!" He pulled out his own Stomper Boot and jumped inside.

"Well, how about that. We got ourselves a shoe war," Bowser declared with a half-grin.

Both jumped at each other at the same time, collided, and bounced back several feet. They jumped again - and the same thing happened. The next time they jumped, Dedede decided to do this a little differently. As they crossed paths, he hopped out of his boot, grabbed Bowser out of his, and piledrived him into the ground. He charged up the hammer with a mountain of fire, and slammed it into Bowser's head, eliciting a shout of pain.

Bowser's body began to shudder, and then it grew. And grew. And grew, until he was the size of a mountain.

"HAH HAH HAH!" Bowser's voice boomed across the sky. "Try dealing with this now!" He effortlessly picked up the entire line of stands, shook Kirby off, and smashed them into the open-mouthed Dedede.

There was a shout as all the stands shattered into thousands of large wooden spears that drove themselves into Dedede. He gasped and struggled out of the wreckage, pulling out wooden sticks everywhere. He was bloodied, but alive.

"TAKE THIS!" Bowser shouted, and jumped thousands of feet into the air, and dropped straight on top of Dedede, the full force on his strength put into crushing him. Then he got up, and he only saw blood and dirt.

Bowser roared in victory, and shrunk down to his normal size once again.

"And that's how you cook a goose!"

"Eh, I've seen better," Dedede said, emerging from the pile of wood next to Bowser. "You're big, boy, but slow. Lemme show you another giant." As Bowser looked on, shocked, Dedede grew to the very size Bowser had just been at. And then the hammer came down.

It crushed Bowser completely, driving him underground. Dedede switched hands, grabbed Bowser, and dragged him through the ground, churning up all kinds of dirt, rocks, and…lava? Whatever it was, it barely affected Bowser's tough hide. Time for different tactics.

Dedede whirled his hammer around and around, creating a tornado the size of a town, and entrapping Bowser inside of it. Dedede dropped dozens of bombs inside the tornado, waited for them to explode, and when the smoking and screaming Bowser flew his way after the explosion, he swung his hammer like a baseball bat, hitting Bowser thousands of miles away. Dedede clapped, scattering the winds and destroying the tornado, and waited for Bowser to teleport. Eventually, he did. He looked exhausted, bloodied, and barely able to stand.

"And…one punch should do it!" Dedede launched a full-powered punch towards Bowser - only to be met in equal force with a casual wave of Bowser's hand.

"Whazza what?"

Bowser grew slightly. His skin grayed. His eyes turned into flaming balls of anger. Spikes protruded from his body. He was different. He was…Giga Bowser.

"Oh, cra-"

Giga Bowser lifted the giant King Dedede effortlessly and threw him into the ground. He teleported above him and smashed him down with an incredibly strong headbutt. Dedede tried to swat him, but Giga Bowser was far too fast. He was faster than Dedede had ever seen him. Dedede rushed at Giga Bowser, intending to win the whole match with one decisive blow, but Giga Bowser wouldn't give him the chance. He dodged every attempt at a blow Dedede made with relative ease, and delivered his own blows in turn that were far more powerful than normal blows from Bowser. To compete with his speed, Dedede was forced to shrink to his normal size again, and then constantly dodge Giga Bowser's attacks. He just needed to outlast this form, he felt, and then he had victory in the bag. Giga Bowser, however, had no intentions of giving him that luxury. Without warning, he pulled out a massive sheel just like his and threw it, full force, at Dedede. Surprised at this, Dedede was hit full in the face by the shell, and it sent him into the air. Giga Bowser used the opportunity to unleash a storm of clawed attacks on his opponent. The strikes devastated Dedede\, and, when he was about to land, Giga Bowser wrapped himself up in his shell and spun around under him, impaling him in several more places. When Dedede finally landed he was dangerously wounded all over his body and struggling to move. He looked up at Giga Bowser with no obvious way to win.

Giga Bowser laughed and stepped on Dedede's head. He ground his foot into the skull, ready to pop it. Even as the form wore off, Bowser was still in the same position. Victory, he felt, was his.

Then he heard the _hiss_ of a fuse around his waist.

Dedede rolled out from under him and jumped into the pit right before the dynamite went off and sent Bowser howling. He flew up right away and cloned himself one last time to keep the now weakened Bowser busy while he charged his hammer.

The clone unleashed a wall of flames on Bowser, and right when Bowser began to charge through them, frozen him solid. It grabbed the frozen Bowser, threw him high into the air, flew up, and hit him with a charge attack from his hammer. Then he was suddenly below him, smashing his face in with another blow, and did one more spinning blow to force all the ice off and get a dangerously woozy and beaten Bowser to the ground. The clone vanished to save some of Dedede's Star Power, and Bowser slowly managed to stand, only to fall to his knees again. He hazily looked up and saw the equally half-dead King Dedede preparing to throw his hammer at him.

Bowser roared and ran towards Dedede. Neither one of them could take any more. He wrapped himself up in his nigh-unbreakable and supersonic shell and spun towards Dedede just as Dedede threw his hammer.

One way or the other, this was the blow that would decide victory.

Dedede's hammer smashed into Bowser's shell.

And Bowser's shell fell to pieces.

Bowser flopped out of it, moaning in agony. Nothing remained of his shell except scattered green and yellow slivers. "That's…impossible! My shell is unbreakable!"

"So is my superiority over you," King Dedede replied, grinning.

Bowser grimaced. "I still have…one trick." He pulled out another Black Pit Bob-omb and tossed it at Dedede. "And no invincibility to save you!" He began laughing like a madman. The pain, the anxiety, the stress, all came out of him as he laughed.

But Dedede wasn't worried. He simply sucked up the Bob-omb and spit it back out directly into Bowser's laughing maw.

Bowser gagged as the bomb slipped down his throat. "Wha- oh, man."

The bomb exploded, sending pieces of Bowser flying everywhere.

 **-KO!-**

"Well, I de-de-declare myself the oh-fish-ee-al winner!" Dedede shouted. "Ey, Kirby, can I have that Tomato back?"

Kirby had been standing some distance away, due to no longer having any stands to sit on. He nodded happily and spat the fruit right at Dedede, who easily caught it. "Thanks, friend." He ate it, and instantly his wounds were healed and his energy restored. He walked over to where Bowser's head had landed. "Well, guess you needed this more than I did." He dropped the 1-Up on top of the head, and suddenly Bowser's body fully reconstructed itself, healed of all wounds and fatigue.

"What- what happened?"

"You lost, that's what!" Dedede grinned.

Bowser smiled a big, toothy smile. "Aw, man. And I really wanted to win!"

"You…ain't mad?"

"Eh, I'm used to it," Bowser replied. He looked up at the sky. "Wish I could stay, but I'm already really late for a visit to my new kingdom."

"New kingdom? Where?"

"A new dimension. Well, future new kingdom. I'll have enslave everyone already there first." Bowser grinned. "You know how it is."

"I wish," Dedede replied grumpily. "This guy won't let me take over no more kingdoms!" He pointed at Kirby.

"Hey, pipsqueak!" Bowser called out, and Kirby ran up shockingly fast. "You stop stealing my food, and we'll get along nice. But give this guy a break every once in a while, will ya?" He glanced at Dedede. "He deserves it."

"Hiya!" Kirby nodded eagerly, though it was a mystery whether or not he understood what Bowser had said.

"Well, I'm off. If you need me, I'll be taking over a kingdom of ponies."

"Ponies?"

"Ponies."

Dedede waved. "Uh, good luck?"

Bowser gave him a thumbs-ups and headed out to his clown car.

…

Well, that was an explosive victory (I'm not sorry).

Initially, this seems a close call. Both have a variety of items and weapons with much the same capabilities, and both move castles, survive supernova-level blasts, and move at speeds faster than sound. However, King Dedede's statline tends to be well above that of Bowser's, many of his weapons and abilities are better, and those that are left he can easily counter. Much of their arsenal counters each other (Double Cherry & Cloning, Invisibility & Invisibility Stone, Bob-ombs & Balloon Bombs, ect.) and so bears little meaning. But when you take all of that out, what remains of Bowser's arsenal is easily taken care of with the Dedede Hammer alone. Remember that a single hit on Bowser disables his power-ups and that not only can the Dedede Hammer block and counter any magical attack Bowser uses, but also that King Dedede faces planetary-to-galaxy-level magicians, like, every day. He's quite used to blocking magical blasts and countering other forms of magic, and since Bowser's magic has been countered and avoided by Mario and friends several times in the past, there's little reason to say that King Dedede couldn't do it. Bowser is tough, and his shell is supposedly unbreakable, but the hammer has broken unbreakable things before, and King Dedede is every bit as hard to kill as Bowser is. Actually, Dedede is both stronger and faster than Bowser.

At maximum strength, Bowser was able to hold up a section of a collapsing castle that would weigh around 300,000 tons, though he was only able to do so with O'Chunks' help. Even if we factor in the Power Fangs X and Power Band+, that puts his strength at around 432,000 tons. However, Dedede was able to lift Blocky, a stone monster with magically enhanced weight. This guy effortlessly flattened Kirby, creates earthquakes with just a step, and easily smashed through 38 floors of a castle. Even the lower end of weight estimation for this guy puts him at around 500,000 tons. And even though Bowser has been shown to move at speeds of almost Mach 3, or over 2,300 MPH, King Dedede outpaced Kracko, who is canonically stated to move at the speed of lightning, or around 224,000 MPH. And while Bowser has dodged lightning bolts, he has never shown the ability to dodge light-speed attacks like the Mario Bros. have, while King Dedede _can_ dodge such high-speed attacks and even match the reaction time of others who can.

So, Dedede is faster and stronger, and both are pretty much equal in durability, but Bowser's bigger arsenal and higher level of fighting experience still give him the edge, right? Well, not quite. As I mentioned before, much of Bowser's arsenal is countered by Dedede's, and what's left is taken care of by the Dedede Hammer. Let's go into the specifics of that: Bowser's projectiles (including smaller hammers, fireballs, spiked balls, and even extra Wicked Shells) are all blocked and bounced back by a single swing from this hammer - Mario has certainly shown the capability to do that with his own Ultra Hammer, and the Dedede Hammer is at least as powerful as that, if not far more so. The Lightplunger uses electricity to stun its foes, and not only is the hammer warded against elemental attacks, but electricity typically can't travel through wood anyway. Each of Bowser's Power-Ups might initially present a challenge, but that's only until Dedede can hit him. And with his superior speed and tactical mind, that's sure to happen eventually. Bowser's own Giant Hammer, while powerful, still isn't nearly as powerful as Dedede's. Heck, Dedede has faced powerful hammer-wielding foes before and won quite easily. And, of course, the Dedede Hammer specifically counters all magical attacks, ruining any chance Bowser's wands had of impacting the fight. The only weapon that could present an actual problem would be Bowser's Cold Gun. Since the weapon is technologically made, no magical or elemental wards will protect against it, and since it's carried via laser beam, it's hard to dodge - even Mario and Luigi, who have dodged laser beams before, couldn't dodge it. However, not only has King Dedede had far more experience in dodging such beams and matched those who can as well, but he's been frozen solid multiple times and managed to escape and continue the fight each time. It's unlikely this weapon would lead to anything more than a delay for him. Other than that, the Giga Bowser form may provide a challenge, but Dedede is more than tough enough to last until the form wears off, and the fact that Bowser has little control over the form makes it that much easier to outmaneuver. And while Bowser may have more experience in battle, King Dedede has trained far more and, most importantly, his fighting style and martial arts completely counter Bowser's. His more unique fighting style is totally different than what Bowser normally faces, while Bowser's study of Judo, Kung Fu, and Boxing isn't rare at all in the Kirby universe.

Dedede's feats also typically go a step over Bowser's. Bowser may have an IQ of 9,800, while Dedede literally has no mind, but Bowser only ever uses that IQ to build weapons and machines. In terms of strategy, Dedede has consistently accomplished far more and been fooled by far less. Bowser's Inhale ability can move large creatures that would weigh nearly 5 Tons, but Dedede's is specifically stated to be on the same level as Kirby's, who has moved entire mountains with his Inhale ability, weighing some hundreds of thousands or millions of tons. Both defeated their more powerful, evil self, but Bowser's had the specific weakness of only being as powerful if he had the Fawful Bug inside of him, and easily expelled the bug when hit by a gut punch. Bowser also had the bonus of being secretly helped by Mario and Luigi in that fight, and regularly summoned a massive amount of his own minions to help him out. However, Dedede fought his clone without any outside interference or exploitation of weaknesses - and he defeated Dark Meta Knight, who was even more powerful than normal Meta Knight, immediately afterward. Bowser survived having all his skin melted, and King Dedede survived having his _everything_ melted. Bowser has fought and defeated planet-level foes on occasion, and King Dedede regularly defeats star-level foes on his own. And while both have faced universe-level beings (in Super Dimentio and Magolor) and won, Bowser was only able to do so with the help of both Mario and Peach. Even then, the only reason the three of them stood a chance was because of the Pure Hearts countering Super Dimentio's dark magic and making him vulnerable. However, King Dedede was able to defeat Magolor by himself without any outside help or exploitation of weaknesses. Not to mention that Dedede was able to defeat Drawcia, a god-like being who's at least Planet-to-Star-level in power, _without the use of his limbs_. No joke. Drawcia turned him into a living bouncy ball, and he _still_ won. In comparison, not only does Bowser do poorly when under any real restrictions, but he himself often relies on power boosters like Power Stars, Grand Stars, and the Star Rod (does he have an obsession with Stars or what?) in order to get the job done, and is lacking without them.

But really, none of that is what matters most. For all intents and purposes, these two villains work the exact same way in their respective universes. Both are absurdly strong and hard to kill titans who counter the main hero in the ways that matter most. Both are easily defeated by that hero, but will sometimes win anyway. Both have actual lives and secret obsessions, both aren't the best of rulers, and both end up becoming friends with and fighting alongside their lifelong enemies. The only problem is…the gap in power between the two universes. Every role is filled by different characters in each reality, but the character from the Kirby universe is almost always going to be more powerful than the one from the Mario universe. In comparing Mario and Kirby, what is often considered to be Mario's strongest feat is the time he lifted a full castle and kicked it away with ease - which would put his strength at somewhere around 100,000 tons. However, that level of strength is very low when compared to Kirby, who, at different times, threw a monster out of the galaxy, redirected a moon-sized meteor with a single blow, cracked an earth-sized planet in half on three separate occasions, shattered his home planet, Popstar, with one punch, and won what was essentially an arm wrestle against a being with infinite strength. Similarly, Luigi is capable of withstanding a black hole, but Meta Knight can not only outfly the force of a black hole, but survived being sucked through multiple ones at once, tanking the equivalent to three Supernovas to the face, and taking and redirecting blows from a monster who could defeat an entire army of Star Warriors (each of which would be planet-level on average). That level of durability makes Luigi's seem kind of silly. You can repeat this for nearly every slot in the universes, and will find a similar power gap between both universes - including, as shown above, when comparing Bowser and King Dedede. Bowser fights Mario and constantly loses, but almost wins, and Dedede fights Kirby and constantly loses, but almost wins.

There's only one theory that allows for the Mario universe to be on the same level as the Kirby universe, which is that all the Mario characters can easily destroy solar systems, since they have defeated beings powered by Power Stars, which supposedly create entire Solar Systems. However, this is a ridiculous notion - there is no other piece of data or evidence to back up the idea of that level of power, and it was never stated that Power Stars create the world Mario travels to. They may very well have only created portals to such worlds - as is implied by the fact that you visit Whomp's Fortress again in Super Mario Galaxy 2, where it's its own island in the sky. Not to mention that just because something has the power to create doesn't mean the same power goes to other things. A factory machine that can create a car could never travel down the highway at 60 MPH by itself. Maxwell's notebook from the Scribblenauts series can create a nuclear bomb, but the notebook itself can't destroy an entire city without making anything. For that matter, Einstein helped create the first Atomic Warhead. That doesn't mean that he can punch with the power of an Atomic Warhead. No, this "theory" has too little evidence and is too easily disproven to be taken seriously. We must rely on what feats we see the characters perform - and those feats are well below those of the Kirby universe.

When everything is put together, the picture it paints is unfortunately easy to see. Dedede is stronger and faster, has a superior arsenal, his fighting style counters every one of Bowser's, and any advantages Bowser has just aren't enough to overcome the gap between the two worlds.

Dedede just flew away with this one.

 **The winner is King Dedede.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle… 

A blue-clad warrior swings his sword at hypersonic speeds towards a monster the size of a mountain, destroying it in a flash of color with a single blow, then smiles at his furry, flying companion.

VS.

A black-clad warrior swings his sword at hypersonic speeds towards a monster the size of a mountain, destroying it in a flash of color with a single blow, then smiles at his childlike, flying companion.

(Dust vs. Kirito)


	7. Dust vs Kirito

_Episode 6: Dust (Dust: An Elysian Tail) vs. Kirito (Sword Art Online)_

For centuries, one weapon has stuck with all of us as the definitive weapon of the duelist, requiring finesse, skill, and an artistic mind to wield to the best of its ability: the sword. It was said that the greatest swordsmen were fast and precise enough to cut the wings off of a fly. But these two combatants take it way past reasonable - or possible. Dust, the hero of Falana, and Kirito, the champion of Sword Art Online.

For the purposes of this battle, there will be no non-canon appearances or feats allowed, and no healing items; since both have enough to last for months, it would just make for a boring fight and have little to no real impact. Kirito's avatar will have a combination of all previous abilities, but we'll be sticking to the most-used and/or best weapons for each character. So no handguns, no revival stones, and no…dragon poop sword. Both combatants will be allowed their normal in-game assistants, so that means Fidget for Dust and Yui for Kirito. Since both always provide support to the main character, do little fighting themselves, and are with their companions at virtually every point during their journeys, this does not break the rule banning outside help that isn't normally there. In fact, it seems only right to include them, because the vast majority of the time these two have fought and adventured, their companions were with them.

All that said, I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who might win a Death Battle.

 **Dust:**

Sen-Mithrarin was never meant to exist. In the world of Falana, a place where anthropomorphic animals reign supreme, the race known as the Moonbloods, the last remaining followers of the Way of the Flameless Light, were being hunted to extinction by General Gaius and his army. They were considered a scourge on the land, and Gaius felt it was only right to remove them. Fighting by his side was his long-time friend and master swordsman, Cassius. Cassius was a cruel and arrogant fighter who effortlessly slaughtered entire armies before him - but his arrogance turned out to be his undoing when he destroyed a village high in the Blackmoor Mountains. A child with a pure heart, Jin, decided to take revenge, and challenged Cassius to a duel to the death. The fight was over in less than three seconds, with Cassius impaling Jin through the chest - only to find that the child had landed a lucky blow and killed him right back. The two died at the exact same moment, and, when the Moonbloods arrived, they took advantage of the opportunity, utilizing their magic (that…is also not magic, apparently? That's what they say, anyway) to combine both souls into one, forging a warrior unlike the world had ever seen. Born of hatred and love, injustice and justice, the paradoxical creature was called Sen-Mithrarin - but when he woke up in the forest with no memories, he called himself Dust.

Being born a representation of ideals, skill, and justice, Dust is an extraordinary fighter, and though he's quite durable, his real skills shine through his incredible strength and overwhelming speed. His natural talent in all kinds of fighting is enhanced with Cassius's former skill, enabling him to do things like dodge blasts of electricity and send giant stone golems flying with a single hit. The Moonbloods knew they had a winner, so they sent along the most powerful sword in the world to keep him company.

Dust wields the Blade of Ahrah, one of five Blades of Elysium. Forged through the same non-magic magic that created Dust himself, Ahrah is thousands of years old, capable of absurd feats, and is also completely sentient. He will actively speak to Dust both during and outside of battle, and can float and move on his own if necessary. In addition to other magical properties, like banishing evil, Ahrah can read the very essences of others, which lets him find and tell Dust the weaknesses, strengths, and stats of any other being in Falana and offer possible strategies with his hundreds of years of battle experience. But that's not all the sword does; it bestows Dust with several magical powers, like the ability to grip anything with an iron-like vice, allowing him to climb on walls and ceilings, the ability to jump over twenty feet into the air, or just being able to jump off air itself. When using the blade just right, Dust can glide, harness wind currents, hover, and manipulate certain elemental attacks. And that's not the end of it: Ahrah is magically imbued with the skills of all those who have wielded him previously, giving Dust all of those very skills in addition to the ones he already possesses. Oh, and, being the most powerful sword in the world, it's unbreakable, un-meltable, lightning-fast, and capable of slicing through solid steel like butter.

And, since he's wielding the best blade in the land, Dust figured he could use some armor to match. He wears the Robe of the Mithrarin, which, again, is non-magically magically made, and massively boosts his durability. The Mithrarin's Augment similarly boosts his strength, while the Wedding Ring gives him a healing factor. That's right; Dust wears a magical ring that heals his wounds for him, though not at great speeds, and it, for whatever reason, will often stop working if he's near death and overexerting himself. It can still regenerate half the force it takes to kill him within a few minutes, though. And, finally, the Battle Master's Pendant doubles his already insane strength.

But that's not everything he has going along with him. Let's not forget one small, smack-talking, adorable little nimbat named Fidget. Fidget is the guardian of the Blade of Ahrah, and so originally went along with Dust to make sure she got the sword back when he was done with it - only to find out that it was her duty to go along with the sword's chosen bearer anyway. Being a nimbat, Fidget can fly at exceptionally fast speeds, to the point where not even Dust can hit her, has a sixth sense, allowing her to sense the presence of monsters and treasure, and she can use minor amounts of elemental magic. The magic she uses takes three forms. She can throw small blasts of energy that home in on enemies, fireballs that set all they touch to flame, and, most powerful of all, bursts of electricity to cook and disintegrate all she dislikes. And while these attacks aren't that effective alone, Dust can manipulate them with Ahrah to form devastating attacks that can clear out dozens upon dozens of trained soldiers and/or monsters with ease. He can multiply the amount of energy blasts exponentially and scatter them all across a 100-foot radius, bounce the electricity off his blade or throw it himself, or, most powerful of all, create enormous explosions that coat the entire surrounding area in flames. And while their enemies lay on the ground either dead or suffering, Dust and Fidget remain completely untouched. As if that weren't enough, wearing the Wedding Ring somehow doubles the damage these redirected attacks do.

But Dust doesn't need Fidget's magic or Ahrah's guidance to make his enemies fall before him. Dust is an aggressive fighter, preferring to go all-out from the start and finish a battle before his opponent can land the first blow - which he often accomplishes, even when faced up against giants over a hundred feet high, entire battalions of soldiers, and powerful demons. If this doesn't work, however, he backs up, adapts to the situation, and wins through strategy, skill, and pure willpower. But, in addition to all the skill he possesses, both naturally and with Ahrah's magic, he can perform a number of Combos, powerful moves that magically rejuvenate Dust and deal incredible amounts of damage to his foes. _From Whence it Came_ is a ground combo that relies on getting in multiple hits, pulling in enemies for further damage, then throwing them back out before they can strike. _Ash Bound_ focuses on quick slices to inflict pain and distraction while keeping the enemy in place, and is finished off by driving the enemy into the ground with a powerful swing. With _The Undoing_ ,Dust brings the enemy into the air and hits them with several quick blows before launching an incredibly strong and fast one, impaling the enemy and bringing them into the ground. The _Rising Pheonix_ has Dust launching both him and those he's fighting into the sky based on his pure strength, allowing him to have his way with them undisturbed. Finally, after dashing behind an enemy, Dust can perform the _Backslash_ , a move that focuses on taking them by surprise and finishing the fight before they can even react. Wile he may only have a few, the whole point of the Combos is for each and every one to lead into another, creating near-endless loops of suffering for the victim until the fight is over. When an enemy is caught in one of these Combos, Dust can hit them anywhere between twenty to a thousand times, or even more, before it's over. That's no exaggeration - Dust was once challenged to pull off a combo that hit his enemy over a thousand times, and he did it with relative ease.

This is also a big aspect of two other moves. These moves are ones specifically affected by Ahrah's magic, and can be used both as a finisher for Combos and a lead-in. The _Parry_ occurs when Dust and his enemy hit each other's weapons at full strength at the same time. Ahrah's magic activates, knocking both Dust and his opponent back and slowing down time, allowing Dust to rush in and deliver a fatal blow before hit opponent can even hit the floor. But Dust's most powerful move, not just based on pure deadliness but also versatility, is the _Dust Storm_. Though it can't be used for more than about thirty seconds at a time, there's no better tool in Dust's arsenal to take advantage of his fighting style and Combos. To activate this effect, Dust spins Ahrah fast enough to be invisible. With the aid of non-magic magic, this creates a vacuum effect, drawing in enemies, flying bombs, and even enormous bags filled with gold (that would weigh nearly half a ton), all of which are now doomed to the whirlwind of pain. Even the most powerful of enemies are often cuts to ribbons inside of this. But it doesn't just do that: The Dust Storm technique allows Ahrah to absorb both kinetic and elemental energy, adding it to his next blows, and will even increase Dust's already-amazing speed.

And amazing is a rather weak word to describe Dust. This cat/dog/ferret/person thing is able to match the strength of the demonic personification of rage itself, fast enough for his sword strikes to appear invisible to the eyes of deities, and able to take several explosions to the face and a quick dip in lava and end up fine.

Dust is able to casually jump into the air, grab an airship five times his size, and piledrive it into the ground, causing it to explode in a fiery inferno. Considering the length and width of the airship in comparison to Dust himself, the potential materials it was made of, and the way it flew against Dust, the airship must have weighed a bare minimum of 35.9 tons. If we now equip Dust with all of his strength enhancements, this means that Dust must be fully capable of lifting and throwing around 271 tons. In comparison, the average full-sized school bus weighs about 13 tons - so that's like casually taking and throwing over twenty school buses at once. And his speed is just as impressive, if not more so. By comparing the time it takes Dust to complete one full swing measure against a bolt of lightning right next to him, assuming the lower range of lightning speeds of 224,000 MPH, Dust physically lifted Ahrah, positioned him in correlation to the enemy he was facing, and completed the swing fully, slicing right through the foe, in less than 0.00012 seconds. That's 12 one-hundred-thousandth of a second. And while his durability isn't quite as good, it's still well above what should normally be possible. By judging the weight and strength behind a blow from a Trolk, a giant rock creature, and putting it against Dust's full health, with his durability magically augmented, he should be able to take around 112.83 tons of force. That's the force of eleven full-speed cars crashing into you at once. Yeah, Dust is just a little overpowered.

And, for as short a time as he's lived, Dust has used that overpowered-ness as much as he can. He's defeated and killed over two hundred trained soldiers with ease, including special forces with magical powers. He's defeated several swordsmen supposed to be his equal, including Fuse, who was stated to be capable of handling an entire army, and several demons that are supposed to be better. He saved three separate races from extinction, and even defeated Lady Tethys, the goddess of water and lightning. During the fight, he was able to survive godly deathblows and dodge bursts of electricity with ease. Then there was the time he was possessed by a demon of death, and his will was so absurdly strong, he was able to keep control over his own body - then he committed suicide in order to get the demon to leave, and resurrected himself through sheer willpower! He navigated the incredibly dangerous and maze-like Cirromon Caverns without trouble, and forged a path through the Sorrowing Meadow, a place possessed by hundreds of hell's monsters. He made it all the way to the Archer Pass Forge, despite the way being blocked by dozens of living, floating bombs, and made his way through the center of a volcano, and at the top he found and fought his former friend, General Gaius. And then he killed him, despite many claims of Gaius being his better in every way.

But nothing lasts forever, and Dust…didn't. After defeating Gaius, he chose to die in the volcano, leaving the rest of Falana free from Gaius's crusade. This fact shows us that, even though Dust can survive encounters with lava, he can't survive drowning in it. Or being impaled by spikes several times in a row. Or being crushed multiple times by a uber-powerful demonic embodiment of rage. Dust is strong, fast, and tough, but he's far less tough than he is anything else. He's a glass cannon, and several powerful blows will eventually kill him. That's why his main tactic is to finish the fight before it begins, or dodge all attacks and strike when the time comes. Beyond that, he's incredibly light, meaning a single explosion will send him flying several meters away. And he doesn't defend well, choosing to dodge attacks or parry them if necessary - which makes encounters against tank-like enemies cumbersome. Above all, he's still two souls made one, and is always at odds within himself. Ahrah helps keep the peace between them, but it still has distracted him and threatened his life during battle. It doesn't help that, for the vast majority of his journey, he had no idea who he was or what he was supposed to do, only going along with what his conscience told him was right, which lead to his internal arguments causing incredible amounts of confusion. He's almost died several times because of this.

And yet, the only thing that has been able to kill him is himself. Dust is a fierce warrior with a strong sense of justice. Gods and demons alike have tried to slay this Warmblood, and all are sent away humbled and defeated. This is one furry creature you don't want to cross blades with.

 _As they crash through the molten rock and get up, ready to continue the fight, Gaius calls out to Dust._

" _Don't you remember anything, Cassius? Why would you draw your blade against your fellow soldiers? Why would you draw your blade against ME?"_

 _Dust rushes forward and smashes Ahrah against Gaius' sword. "You're destroying this world, Gaius. You and your soldiers cannot be allowed to continue your campaign."_

 _Gaius narrowly defends against every thrust Dust makes and knocks him back. "This world belongs to the strong, Cassius! It belongs to us! Don't you remember your duty? Don't you remember your friends?"_

" _I remember everything," Dust replies, getting up. He throws himself at Gaius, readying a finishing blow. "And it changes nothing!"_

 **Dust:**

Name: Sen-Mithrarin

Species: Warmblood

Age: About 2 Months

Height: 5 ft./ 152 cm

Weight: 70 lbs / 32 kg

Occupation: General

Personification of justice

Thinks Fidget is adorable (who doesn't?)

Loves wearing a satgat. Seriously. It's a little weird.

 **Items/Weapons:**

Blade of Ahrah

Robe of the Mithrarin

Battle Master's Pendant

Wedding Ring

Mithrarin's Augment

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Healing Factor

Iron Grip

Double Jump

Boost Jump

Elemental Guidnace

Hovering

Dust Storm

Parry

 _\- Combos:_

From Whence it Came

The Undoing

Rising Pheonix

Ash Bound

Backslash

 **Feats:**

Defeated an entire army…twice

Saved a race from extinction…thrice

Defeated Lady Tethys

Defeated the spirit of Baron Kane

Defeated Fuse

Defeated General Gaius

Defeated demons and other powerful monsters easily

Navigated and forged paths through places deemed impossible

Lifted and piledrived an airship

Knocked back Trolks, Giants

Dodged lightning

Swung Ahrah fast enough to be invisible

Took three explosions right after each other

Survived a dip in lava

Killed himself, survived

Apparently survived being incinerated?

 **Weaknesses:**

Stamina doesn't last forever

Rarely blocks attacks

Very bold in battle, leads to mistakes

Can be knocked back quite far

Difficult to get out of combos

Always battling inner demons

Over-relies on Ahrah and Fidget

A complete glass cannon

…

 **Kirito:**

Kazuto Kirigaya wasn't supposed to be a hero. In the year 2022, a development team worked tirelessly to create the first ever home console using FullDive technology, which brought a gamer's mind into the virtual world. Led by Akihiko Kayaba, they managed to eventually create both the technology, labeled as the NerveGear, and the first game for the system, Sword Art Online. In order to make sure everything was fully functional, they recruited 1000 beta testers, including Kazuto himself. Kazuto very quickly found himself enthralled in the world of SAO. So, when the full game came out and he received his free copy, he plugged himself in right away. Unbeknownst to him, Kayaba had removed the player's ability to log out of the system and, for no explained reason, turned the entirety of SAO into a game of death. Basically, you die in the game, you die in real life. The only way to end it was to beat all 100 floors of Castle Aincrad, the location of the game. As people died off left and right, Kazuto stood above everyone as an expert, who played the game better than nearly anyone else could hope to. A beacon of hope, if you will. And while his true name was Kazuto, to everyone that mattered, he called himself Kirito.

As a former beta tester and video game extraordinaire, Kirito became one of SAO's top players immediately, in no small part thanks to his natural talent as a swordsman. While he's durable enough, it's his great strength and mind-blowing speed that showcases his real skill. Being able to do things like impale a player dozens of feat away before they can finish drawing their weapon or send a minotaur flying with a single kick, even in a realm where fantasies come to life, Kirito is above the rest. So it only makes sense that his weapons are above the rest, too.

Kirito's primary sword is the Elucidator. Though it's merely a drop from the Floor 50 boss of SAO, it's one of the most powerful swords in that game and several others. It's very powerful and extremely fast. Made for slashing rather than parrying, blocking, or thrusting, it's short, but compliments Kirito's speedy fighting style perfectly. It's not indestructible, but is able to take and redirect blows from the best swords in the game without any effort, so it won't be breaking anytime soon. It's also sharp enough to cut through most metals with ease, including steel and titanium, and has been enchanted to be able to fend off magical attacks. Kirito, however, has the unique Dual-Wielding skill. Granted to him by Kayaba himself, because he had the best reaction speed of any SAO player, this skill allows him to equip another sword in his left hand and use both in turn. This requires a totally different skill set and fighting style, which he's also mastered. His secondary sword is none other than the legendary Holy Sword Excalibur. Far superior to any other weapon in the game it comes from, Excalibur is virtually indestructible and hits absurdly hard. It's only downside is that it's heavy and slightly slower than the Elucidator. This is the biggest reason Kirito only activates Dual-Wielding when One-Handed swordplay isn't working out. Simply put, he's better with the Elucidator alone. But with that strong of a sword, it's hard to go wrong.

And it's similarly hard to go wrong with his stylish cloak. The Blackwyrm Coat boasts very little defense, but is extremely light and maneuverable, making it a good option for someone who moves as fast as Kirito. It does boast another skill, though. Wearing the Blackwyrm Coat increases Kirito's hiding stat dramatically. When hiding, Kirito doesn't appear on maps or searching and becomes difficult to spot, even if you're looking at him. The only guaranteed way to be seen in this state is if facing someone with a higher Detection statline than your Hiding statline or if you begin fighting or attacking. Wearing this coat also increases Kirito's regeneration statline. Oh, yeah, when Kirito is injured, his Battle Healing ability heals damage dealt over time, healing to full in about 250 seconds. However, for whatever reason, if Kirito has been in any kind of combat with anyone near his level, the ability won't trigger - like during battles with Gleam Eyes and Kuradeel, which only left him at 1 HP - and no healing happening. Which is dumb.

But two swords and a coat aren't all he carries along with him. Let's not forget a strange, oddly-cutesy Psychology A.I. named Yui. Yui is…Kirito's daughter. Somewhat. Basically, after he married his longtime fighting partner Asuna, they discovered Yui and pretty much adopted her. I know, it's weird, but just go with it. After Kirito beat SAO and Asuna got stuck in a new game called Alfheim Online (ALO), Yui was brought back as a fairy companion for Kirito. As a fairy, she can fly around effortlessly with no defined limit, and is considered an immortal object. Nothing can hurt her. Her primary function in battle is to give Kirito information and possible strategies. She knows just about everything there is to know, and can determine exactly what would help Kirito at this moment and is able to sift through it all with a 95% proficiency. She's also a skilled hacker, easily able to get into other people's accounts and even cross gaps between games. She once even hacked into a government database within a minute…and was never found out. She also has extra senses due to her nature as an A.I. She recognizes where something, or someone, is and what they're about to do the exact moment the game does, which can provide great help to Kirito in certain situations.

But Kirito rarely needs her help to kill off a Floor Boss, which would normally take 75 people, all on his own. He's an aggressive fighter with a tactical mind. He comes into battle swinging quickly, hoping not to destroy his opponent right away, but to test them. See how they react, then dodge every blow with his superhuman agility, and change his tactics appropriately. This may seem odd on paper, being aggressive without being aggressive, but in practice it works out almost every time. Whether it's against player or monster, this tactic always increases Kirito's chance of living and tells him everything he needs to know to defeat the fighter in a very short period of time. He wins most of his fights within ten seconds. He won't go all-out unless he feels he needs to, but if he feels he needs to, you can kiss whatever hope you had of surviving good-bye. See, Kirito is already a master swordsman, but in addition to his great swordplay, SAO has a certain set of powers titled "Sword Skills" granted to players who are really, really good at sword fighting. And since Kirito's mastered it, he knows…all of them. Sword Skills are special sword abilities that are accessed by performing a certain action. They may take anywhere between half a second and five seconds to charge, and induce a delay upon Kirito after execution, but they're so powerful it rarely matters. There are the simple ones, of course, like _Horizontal_ (slash horizontally), _Horizontal Arc_ (slash horizontally twice), and _Horizontal Square_ (slash horizontally four times in a square), but there are a lot that are far more interesting. _Rage Spike_ is a charging thrust meant to cover a great distance in a short time, but is relatively weak. _Vorpal Strike_ is very similar but is faster and more powerful, but has a longer delay afterward. _Sharp Nail_ is a three-slash attack to hit the enemy on the right, then the left, then the middle, _Sonic Leap_ is a charging aerial slice that's near-impossible to avoid, and _Slant_ is a slanted slash that can reach up to 2.5 meters away. With _Spinning Shield_ , Kirito spins his sword fast enough to become, essentially, a shield, blocking a single powerful blow, and dispersing fire and frost. _Deadly Sins_ is a several-hit attack meant for finishing a weakened opponent or utterly destroying someone who can't react quickly enough. _Howling Octave_ sets the sword on fire, then has Kirito thrust through his opponent multiple times before finishing it off with a slash up and a slash down. With _Savage Fulcrum_ , he cuts half-way through his enemy, unleashes a wave of frost magic, and cuts the foe straight up through the head. Let's not forget _Lightning Fall_ , which charges the sword with lightning that can be transmitted or thrown. Then there's _Meteor Fall_ , where Kirito throws his sword into the air, punches the opponent, knocking them back, then jumps into the air, reacquires the sword, lights it on fire, and slices through the enemy. Needless to say, it's usually very fatal. Not as fatal as _Meteor Break_ , however. A high-speed seven-slash attack, Meteor Break hits with multiple wide slashes and a shoulder blow for good measure, then finishes off by slicing through the opponent's neck. Each and every Sword Skill can be used in some way against nearly any opponent, and a great swordsman, which Kirito is, can tell exactly when and where to use them for maximum damage. They all work as great finishers, too. This is doubly true for Kirito's Two-Handed Sword Skills.

Only usable when Dual-Wielding, there aren't that many Two-Handed Sword Skills - but the ones there are can often be far more devastating then One-Handed ones, which are already devastating enough. Let's start off with the only defensive skill Kirito has in his whole arsenal: _Cross Block_. Basically, Kirito crosses both swords and uses them to block a blow. The blow's power is measured against the swords' durability, and anything stronger is inflicted on Kirito, with everything below the durability being negated. This will often be used to prevent a potentially lethal blow that Kirito couldn't dodge in time. For more deadly, however, is the _Double Circular_ , a spinning attack that extends the reaches of both swords and slices through everything around Kirito. _The Eclipse_ is Kirito's most-hitting attack, being a 26-hit slashing storm of blades and fury. Kirito uses both swords to launch over twenty very fast, but rather weak, blows to his opponent, then thrust forward with both swords, impaling the opponent in two different places - if they aren't dead by then, they soon will be. Last, but not least, is Kirito's most powerful Sword Skill: _Starburst Stream_. It's very similar to The Eclipse, and while it doesn't hit as many times, with only 16 strikes instead of 26, each strike is far more powerful and induces plenty of knock-back after the attack finishes. The downside is that it's not quite as fast and exerts enormous pressure on Kirito - like making him unable to block a simple incoming blow afterward or…fainting. It's a win-or-lose move, and, because of that, he has only used it twice. Once it worked. Once it didn't.

But "not working" isn't a phrase that's often used when referring to Kirito's abilities. This literal video game avatar is able to jump over twenty feet into the air, casually push back blows from monsters ten times his size, swing fast enough to appear invisible, even to the eyes of deities, and take impalement, being crushed, being shot, and being in the middle of an explosion and end up totally fine. This is, in part, thanks to him being a game avatar; he has a defined HP bar, and it goes down with each hit. However, where and how he's struck rarely makes a difference in how his HP goes down. So if he's stabbed through the stomach, he'll feel the pain of being stabbed through the stomach, but he won't die like a normal person - his health would just go down a little. But being a living video game character isn't Kirito's only trick. Kirito has access to a special set of outside-battle skills, which can activate whenever he wishes for them to. These include _Running on Walls_ , which does that you think it does, and _Arms Blast_ , which discovers the weak points of weapons and makes them open to be hit. Upon hitting a weak point, the weapon will shatter. With _Hypersense_ , he can sense the morality of another player, basically telling him if they would kill him or not, and his _Detection_ skill gives him a slight sixth sense, which allows him to see hidden or invisible creatures and players and track down vanished objects. But none of these compare to his _Flight_ ability. After entering ALO, Kirito gained light Spriggan Fairy Wings, which allow him limited flight for up to ten minutes. He can even engage in aerial battles. But that's not the last of it. With his _Illusion Magic_ , Kirito's only magical ability aside from making smokescreens, Kirito will transform into a mighty beast, capable of effortlessly tearing through battalions of high-level players and breaking solid steel like wet paper. The form only lasts a few minutes, though, and takes over a full minute to charge, so it's unreasonable in a fast-paced fight. The monster doesn't even increase his stats all that much, which makes sense, considering his stats are nuts.

Kirito is capable of casually punching a hole through solid steel. Considering the thickness of the steel and the size of the hole in question, this must have take around 272 tons of force - that's like being hit by a crashing train. His speed is even more ridiculous. While participating in Gun Gale Online's Bullet of Bullets competition, Kirito wielded a Photon Sword, which he stated felt quite similar to his normal Elucidator. While using that sword, he effortlessly blocked and redirected every single bullet from a machine gun shooting only a few feet away on three separate occasions. During one of them, we get a close-up of a bullet in comparison to Kirito's face where it's mere inches away. In order to block this bullet before it hit him, like he did, Kirito would have needed to ready, raise, and swing his sword in just slightly over 0.00011 seconds. To put that into perspective, in one second, a beam of light could travel around the earth 7.5 times. In 0.00011 seconds, a beam of light would barely make it nine feet. And while his durability isn't quite on this level, it's still up there in terms of absurdity - largely thanks to his HP system. By judging the weight and power behind several different monster swings that we clearly see the HP Meter go down for and scaling it to Kirito's highest known level (96), we have it that he could survive a little over 111 tons of force. Kirito could survive having the 25 largest grand pianos in the world smashed over his head all at once, without needing his Battle Healing ability. He may just be slightly (if by slightly you mean totally) overpowered.

And throughout multiple games and lots of stories, Kirito has proven that overpowered-ness time and time again. The guy has taken on thousands of monsters by himself and defeated entire bosses completely alone, including an evil Santa Boss that, at this point, was supposed to be facing almost a hundred players. He and Asuna once went up to Floor 74, cleared out every one of thousands of monsters, cleared out the dungeons completely, and then defeated the incredibly deadly and powerful Gleam Eyes boss - all because _they were bored_. Kirito pretty much beat Gleam Eyes by himself. Remember that the majority of players, even ones in guilds focusing on combat and defeating monsters, never dared to go to a floor that high for fear that a _single_ monster would wipe them all out. But monster-killing is hardly the end of his feats. This guy helped destroy two of the deadliest guilds in the game, defeated one of the most powerful guild's best ranking members in less than three seconds, and even defeated Kayaba himself, freeing everyone from the death game, while Kayaba was using an avatar specifically made to be impossible to defeat. He did this by striking the final blow immediately after Kayaba had impaled him, as this was the only point the could get through his defensive techniques. Since the last blow officially killed him, he should have died right then and there, but, through sheer willpower, he survived for another 30 seconds anyway. And that's just from when he was in SAO. When he traveled to other games, like ALO, he accomplished a lot more - like defeating yet another supposedly impossible to defeat game maker _while under ten times the pain of being impaled_. Or defeating hundreds of the most powerful sentries in the game. Or defeating the game's best player in a duel merely two days after first signing on. He wiped out an entire guild in under a minute, placed 2nd in the ALO Swordsman Tournament while only using one-handed skills, and even reached the top of the World Tree, a feat no other player or guild had accomplished. After this, he entered Gun Gale Online (GGO) in order to find and defeat Death Gun, who could evidentially kill players in real life by killing them in-game (doesn't that sound familiar). During his time there, he participated in the Bullet of Bullets tournament and killed dozens of different gunmen. He even deflected a sniper round from only a few feet away. He also won the Untouchable! bullet dodging minigame, which was stated to be impossible to win, by predicting where the NerveGear would predict the bullets to be and dodging those areas before the system was aware of it. Oh, and he won the Bullet of Bullets and killed Death Gun. Later, he defeated the four Integrity Knights, considered more powerful than any of his former foes.

But nothing lasts forever, and Kirito has died more than once, be it due to overwhelming numbers, a fair duel, or his own sacrifice. He's lost his fair share of times against better players, and his speed and strength isn't always enough. He has great trouble against defensive foes who can block his attacks, and requires an opening before he can properly fight an opponent. Because of the time they take to charge and the delay they induce on him, his Sword Skills actively work against his fighting style, and he finds it best to only use a couple during his battles. Not to mention that they're extremely predictable against foes who have seen them before. He hasn't always performed well when facing foes with similar levels of speed, like Yuuki, a young girl who managed to defeat him twice using speed and skill alone. This is because he's a glass cannon, and isn't able to take what he can dish out. He has almost zero defensive options. He's great at parrying attacks from slower foes, but if he can't dodge a blow, there's almost nothing he can do - similarly, if he's caught in another's chain of Sword Skills, it's virtually impossible for him to get out of it. He's also absurdly overconfident in his fighting abilities. He'll do things like give an enemy who wants to kill him the best sword in the game just because Kirito thinks he's a terrible swordsman without Kirito once actually seeing that opponent's skill, attempt to kill a player by stabbing through a shield that has never been broken while using a sword that has been broken before, or stopping in the middle of a fight to have a conversation, not realizing his opponent wouldn't do the same thing - or that his opponent would take advantage of this and end up killing him. Most importantly, though, is his over-reliance on his friends. Virtually every time he's pulled off some incredible feat, his friends have helped him - like Klein and Asuna giving him an opening to attack Gleam Eyes, Leafa consistently healing him with magic while he was fighting Guardian Knights, or Sinon covering him with her sniper rifle when he's taking care of some of his more powerful foes - including Death Gun himself. Even during his fight against Kayaba, Kirito only won because Asuna took a fatal blow for him.

But regardless of any help he's received from others, Kirito's feats stand alone. There's a reason he's considered a legend among gamers and an overpowered hero among manga. The Black Swordsman is nobody to be trifled with.

 _As their massive guild of over a hundred players rushes towards the small team Sleeping Knights, a member of the guild shouts out "You don't know when to give up!"_

 _Suddenly, a young man in a black coat with a fairy companion is running behind them. He puts on a burst of speed and runs up a wall, easily surpassing the guild, then lands right in front of the Sleeping Knights, stopping both guilds in their tracks._

" _Sorry," Kirito declares, drawing his sword, "this place is off limits."_

" _Hey, Blacky," the guild's leader calls out confidently, "even you can't possibly fight this many people at once, can you?"_

 _Kirito shrugs, smiling. "I don't know. I've never tried."_

 _The leader smiles. "Oh? Then let's try." He snaps his fingers. "Mages, torch him."_

 _As dozens of magical projectiles launch themselves at him, Kirito charges up a Sword Skill and effortlessly cuts through every one, leaving everyone around him awe-struck - and the guild before him terrified._

 **Kirito:**

Name: Kazuto Kirigaya

Species: Human/Spriggan

Age: 17

Height: 6'8"/ 172 cm

Weight: 130 lbs / 59 kg

Occupation: Student

Favorite Food: Teriyaki Chicken Burgers

Favorite Pastime: Fishing

Average Yawn Length: Eight Seconds

Once tried wielding three swords, with one in his mouth. Couldn't do it.

 **Items/Weapons:**

Elucidator

Holy Sword Excalibur

Throwing Pick

Blackwyrm Coat

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Battle Healing

Flight

Illusion Magic

Running on Walls

Detection

Arms Blast

Hypersense

 _\- One-Handed Sword Skills:_

Horizontal

Horizontal Arc

Horizontal Square

Vertical

Vertical Arc

Vertical Square

Rage Spike

Sharp Nail

Slant

Spinning Shield

Sonic Leap

Vorpal Strike

Meteor Fall

Meteor Break

Deadly Sins

Lightning Fall

Savage Fulcrum

Howling Octave

 _\- Two-Handed Sword Skills:_

Double Circular

Cross Block

The Eclipse

Starburst Stream

 **Feats:**

Defeated an entire guild…four times

Saved every life in a game…three times

Defeated Nicholas the Renegade

Defeated Kuradeel

Defeated Gleam Eyes

Defeated Akihiko Kayaba

Defeated Death Gun

Defeated Fairy King Oberon

Defeated General Eugene

Defeated a lot of other people

Navigated and forged paths through places deemed impossible

Punched through solid steel

Knocked back Giants, Minotaurs

Dodged point-blank sniper rounds

Moved fast enough to be invisible

Took several explosions to the face

Survived being impaled dozens of times

Killed himself, survived

2nd Place in ALO Swordsman Tournament

Co-winner of third Bullet of Bullets

Beta the Untouchable! minigame

Reached the top of the World Tree

Held his own against dozens of Guardian Knights

Defeated the four Integrity Knights

Held off Thor himself

Survived marriage

 **Weaknesses:**

Stamina doesn't last forever

Rarely blocks attacks

Battle techniques struggle against speedy players

Sword Skills are easily played around and induce delay

Over-relies on his friends

A complete glass cannon

Incredibly overconfident in his skills

Died five times - that we know of

Defeated by several players

Battle Healing is countered by…fighting.

Very difficult to get out of combos or chain attacks

Performs best only when a lot is at stake

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all. It's time for a Death Battle!

…

"I'm worried about the Moonbloods," Dust stated as he ran forward through the volcanic caverns. "They shouldn't have stayed behind for me."

"You will have enough on your mind once we reach Gaius, Dust." Ahrah told him. "We must not worry about them now."

"Oh, yeah, let's not worry about the barely-surviving on their own six fighters holding off an entire army for us," Fidget growled at Ahrah. "That might make us look like decent people!"

"This is the moment the rebellion has been waiting for for a long time, Fidget," Ahrah reminded her, "and each fighter would gladly sacrifice themselves so that Dust can end this once and for all."

"Well, don't feel too guilty about it," Fidget replied sarcastically.

"Fidget, Ahrah, no fighting." Dust ordered them. "I'm going to need both of you if I want a chance of winning."

"It wasn't an argument," Ahrah corrected him, "I was simply correcting a mistake in her logic."

"You may be the only sentient sword on this planet who considers the gift of life a mistake in logic," Fidget scolded.

"I am, indeed. None of the others have awakened yet. I feel sure they will agree with me."

"Fidget," Dust questioned, "Is there anything in between us and the General? Besides distance, of course."

"Rocks," Fidget answered. "Lava. Death. Take your pick."

"I would be careful, Dust," Ahrah warned. "You have been gone for several months. Chances are high that you have been replaced, and we were not made aware of it."

"So there's going to be someone else to get through before I reach Gaius?"

"It is quite likely. We must make sure to handle the encounter carefully - he is likely to be as powerful or even more so than Cassius was, and we would be fighting General Gaius almost immediately afterward."

"You mean more powerful than _I_ was," Dust corrected stubbornly. "I know everything, Ahrah. Stop trying to spare me. Fidget, are you sure there's nothing?"

Fidget shrugged. "Look, nimbats aren't exactly known for their amazing future-telling talents. Just 'cause I don't sense him now doesn't mean he's not there."

"I see," Dust replied. Then, confidentially, he reiterated his earlier sentence. "Let's be careful, but I'll need both of you by my side. We can do this - together."

…

Meanwhile, Kirito was standing in a room on the other side of reality. In front of him was a lagging, bugged-out door.

"Hmm, you did that pretty quickly, Yui. You haven't been practicing your hacking on government property again, have you?"

Yui chuckled and flew up to Kirito's head, resting in his hair. "Let's not talk about that yet. The door is open, Daddy! Who knows what it leads to?"

"A room cut out from the main game. Supposed to be inaccessible. What do you think about those rumors of it leading to Alfheim's secret end-game boss?"

"They're just rumors," replied Yui uneasily. "But…uh, maybe we should wait for Mommy, just in case?"

"Yui, you're invincible," replied Kirito. "You have nothing to worry about."

"But what if the boss has a secret ability that makes me not invincible? What if it's super strong and kills you and then me?"

"That's…pretty unlikely. Yui, when have I ever lost a boss fight?"

"What about when-"

"Nevermind. We can handle this on our own. Besides, being the first ever player and A.I. to enter a secret area of the game? That's got to be exciting."

"If, by exciting, you mean terrifying." Yui dug her face deeper into Kirito's hair.

Kirito laughed. "We'll be fine. Now get up; I'm going to need you if there's really a boss in there."

Yui hesitantly lifted herself off Kirito's head and landed on his shoulder.

Breathing deeply, Kirito opened the door.

There was a rush of wind, and the door faded into nothingness. Streams of data zoomed about around him, like they didn't know where they were supposed to be.

"Daddy?" Yui said, "I think something's wrong."

But they didn't have to worry for long. In another five seconds, everything around them had vanished - and the found themselves in the open air, resting on a long platform in the middle of a volcano.

"Well, this is interesting," Kirito mused.

Then Dust raced into view.

Dust was running full-throttle, then came to a sudden stop when he saw Kirito, causing Fidget to smack right into him.

"Ow!" she complained. "With all that soft cloth between you and your back, why does it still hurt every time I bump into you?!"

"Ahrah, who…what, is that?"

"I don't know, Dust," Ahrah replied. "He seemed to appear out of nowhere. Be careful; I sense he is just as physically capable as you."

"He is?"

"Yes. And there's something else about him, too…something different."

Fidget looked from one of them to the other. "Well, why are we waiting here? Let's get 'im!"

"Calm down, Fidget," Dust told her. "We don't know anything about this guy. He could be a friend."

"Weirdest-looking friend I've ever seen," commented Fidget. "But, by all means, go ahead and have a nice conversation with him. I can see it now." She breathe din deeply and spoke with an over-exaggerated deeper voice. "'Oh, hello there, bad dude! My name is Dust, and I'm the baddest bad dude around! You bad? Me too! We can be bad dudes doin' bad dude stuff together!' And then he slices your head off. Great plan!"

"I…sound nothing like that."

There was silence from both Fidget and Ahrah.

"Actually, Dust-" Fidget began.

"No, he's my wielder," Ahrah interrupted. "I should tell him."

"This- this is the one thing you two agree on? That I sound like some kind of…hipster?"

"You _were_ made by the magic of life itself," Ahrah acknowledged.

"And you constantly wear that silly hat because 'It looks cool.'" Fidget continued.

"Your goal is to spread peace to the edges of the world."

"You have a sword you claim talks to you."

"And you-"

"I get it!" Dust stopped them. "Let's find out about him. Tactfully."

Fidget shrugged, then shouted "Hey! You up there! Are you the one sent to kill us?"

"Smooth, Fidget," Dust told her, sounding exasperated.

Kirito only heard the shout.

He paused, taking advantage of the increased height of his platform to study the group below him. "Monsters don't…normally talk. Especially bosses."

"Maybe that's a reason why the room was closed off?" Yui offered.

"The way those two communicated - it almost seemed they were strategizing. They could be sentient." He shook his head. "But a sentient boss is still a boss - and after that question, there's little doubt that this is, indeed, the boss fight we were promised."

"I don't like this," Yui whispered.

"I guess I am!" Kirito called back to the crew below. He watched their reactions - startled, mostly, but with some grim acceptance. If there was to be a sentient boss in the game, he wasn't surprised it was implemented like this. And a showdown in the middle of a volcano? It'd be hard to get more climactic than this. He waved to them. "If you want to face me, come up here!"

"Why don't you come down here?" The flying one shouted back. "Just because you're a big-shot who thinks he can cut out our faces and string up our innards-" she was silenced by the blue-hatted one below. He seemed surprised at her, for some reason. More surprising still was when he took up the offer, jumping up to Kirito's platform with a single leap.

"Daddy, be careful with this boss," Yui whispered in his ear. "That blue one - he's the main one you have to worry about. He's just as fast as you."

Kirito's eyes widened. "That's different."

"It almost looks like his stats were directly lifted from yours, probably when you entered the room," Yui affirmed, "But there's something…different about him."

Kirito hadn't received a fighting prompt, but he assumed that was due to the nature of this room. He drew the Elucidator. "So, what's your name?" He called.

Dust held Ahrah out forward. "Yours first. Who are you, and why do you want to kill me?"

"Call me Kirito. And it's…kinda my job. You know, killing people like you. I do it for fun."

Dust grimaced and readied his blade. "I am Dust. And don't think I'll be going down without a fight."

"I hope not," Kirito replied, grinning. "That'd be boring." He stretched out his sword-wielding hand and bent his knees, getting into his favorite fighting position.

 **-FIGHT!-**

Kirito moved first.

The first move of the battle was a running thrust, with Kirito charging ahead and stabbing out his sword at multiple different angles to see what his opponent would do. Would he dodge the blows? Parry them? Block them? As soon as he had that information, he could begin working on a strategy to defeat this boss.

Dust saw the attacks and lowered his sword. Though they were moving fast enough to look like multiple swords, he knew there was really only one blade. He just needed to see where it would hit and…

Kirito made a final thrust at Dust's neck, but a millisecond before the blade could hit him, Dust had lifted Ahrah, blocking the thrust with its broadside. Instantly afterward, Dust knocked the Elucidator backwards and dove behind Kirito, where he performed a Backslash, striking the first hit of the fight. Kirito jumped forward in pain and surprise, then leaped into the air right before a slash connected with him. Dust kept slashing forward, readying the spot where Kirito would land, but Kirito shifted to the right and twirled in the air, spinning his black sword at Dust, who deftly scraped the blow away with his own blade - giving Kirito an opportunity to hit him. He smashed his sword up, throwing Dust's hand off, and completed the motion with a slice, leaving Dust in the same condition that Dust had left him.

Dust took advantage of their close range and led off with his own slice, readying a ground combo, but Kirito parried every blow neatly - though Dust didn't pretend not to notice the sweat on his brow. Dust slammed Ahrah straight up, throwing both him and Kirito into the air, but rather than attempt to fight him there, dove down towards the ground, spinning Ahrah to get more distance between them. The moment Kirito landed, he jumped high into the air to reach Dust more quickly, and from a vantage point, and that's when Dust made his move. "Fidget, energy!"

Fidget instantly threw out four energy projectiles, but when Ahrah touched them, they turned into hundreds - hundreds that rose up and tore through Kirito at the height of his jump. The power of the energy kept Kirito in the air temporarily, as it kept going back and forth to damage him over and over again. Kirito managed to cut through most of them, dissipating each one - but not before Dust had reached him with a powerful leap. Dust slashed his blade through his entire body several times in rapid succession before impaling him through the chest and piledriving him into the ground. Dust got up from the young man and turned, assuming victory.

All this happened in under ten seconds.

While Dust moved away, Kirito bit through the pain and managed to get up. He looked at his health bar and compared it to Dust's. Over a third of his HP was gone, which was far more than the seemingly-untouched Dust.

"He really is just as fast as me," he whispered to Yui. "That…caught me off-guard. Do you have anything?"

"The sword he uses…it's weird."

"Magic? We can counter-"

"No…yes…no. It's just like magic, but…it's not. And I think it's alive. Not sure, though."

Kirito sighed weakly. "Anything else?"

"This boss appears to go in for the kill right away. He tries to adapt to whatever you have based on that if he doesn't win."

"So I give him no room for that. Keep changing things up, give him nothing to adapt to."

"Persevere, and you'll win, Daddy."

"Thank you, Yui. Let's start taking this seriously." He raised his sword and readied a Rage Spike. Less than a second later, he launched it.

Dust heard Ahrah shout "Dust! Behind you!" right before he was struck with the blow. The strike stabbed through him and sent Dust to the ground. He rolled and slashed at his assailant, who blocked the blow with one sword - only for another, golden one to materialize in his other hand and stab Dust through the chest.

Dust fell back instantly, coughing. His healing factor had work to do, but it didn't look like this black-clad warrior would give it the chance. "How did he survive? It should be impossible-"

"His physical body is not natural," Ahrah informed him. "Somehow, it distributes force across his whole being. Whether you stab him in the head or the foot, it will do a set amount of damage and change nothing."

Dust growled. "Then let's stab him everywhere at once. Fidget, fireballs!"

"Flame on!" Fidget yelled out as she threw the meteor-like flaming balls. Dust had no idea why she liked doing that so much.

He struck the fireballs downward at Kirito's feet, and the exploded immediately, wrapping the whole area in flames and almost guaranteeing a kill.

Almost.

The fire cleared incredibly quickly quite suddenly as Kirito was revealed twirling his black sword around in a vortex-type manner. His other sword was nowhere to be seen.

"So he can summon it magically?" Dust questioned, right before sliding across another strike.

Kirito turned and struck again, hitting Dust in the back and causing him to lurch, and before he could finish half of his lurch, he was hit again in the side, then again in front and on the other side in less than a second. Dust fell backwards and a square-shaped beam of light burst out of thin air. Kirito stopped for a split second before thrusting down towards Dust - which was just enough time for Dust to jump up and dodge left of Kirito, swinging Ahrah as he went, in order to throw in a quick slash. Kirito fell back slightly, then launched a slanted slash with his sword that extended its length by more than enough to cleave Dust in two. Dust hopped over the sword, only to be thrown out of the air by an aerial slash.

Kirito paused and caught his breath. His health had been lowered, yes, but now Dust's was nearly equal to his. But Dust somehow kept figuring out what was happening just in time to avoid it. An idea popped into his head.

"Yui, what's his stamina level?"

"The same as yours."

"Good."

Kirito held out his sword, like he was waiting to be challenged. Dust hesitated for a split second before attacking, but then immediately launched a barrage of attacks to destroy Kirito - except he wasn't there. Kirito had quickly flipped out of the way, then repeated his stance. Dust zoomed towards him and delivered a full-powered slash - but, again, Kirito easily out-maneuvered it. While Dust was wasting excess energy delivering finishing blows that would never land, he could keep up this dodging for hours. He just needed to wait until Dust was tired out. He landed, and held out his sword like before.

"Dust," Fidget spoke quietly. "I'm pretty sure this is a tra-"

Dust had already moved forward, unleashing several combos at once, coating the entire next several meters with a hurricane of attacks - attacks with no target in sight.

Kirito landed behind Dust and punched him with a flaming hand, knocking Dust some meters forward. As Dust got up, he pulled out his sword again and waited.

"Dust, calm down!" Ahrah scolded. "He's trying to make you waste your energy. He can avoid these attacks you're doing."

"Let's try to see him avoid this!" Dust exclaimed, and ran forward, holding Ahrah out like a javelin.

Kirito jumped - and fell back down. He was being pulled in by some strange force - a force he soon discovered was actually a whirlwind of pain. He shouted as the cuts hit him everywhere, and Dust stopped the Dust Storm for a split second in order to slash up, sideways, and down again, throwing Kirito forward - right into a slash that brought him into the sky, and then several slashed that cut their way through his body. But Kirito wasn't going to be impaled again. He sprouted wings and flew out of the way a split second before Dust could hit him. He remained in the air, motioning for Dust to come and get him.

"Daddy," Yui warned. "You might not want to play games with this enemy."

"Relax, Yui. I've got this." Kirito said.

Two seconds later, it was proven he hadn't "got this" when he was smashed into the ground again as Dust met all of his strikes easily and countered with several surprise hits. He looked at their health meters. Both were half-gone.

"I've got to go all-in," he realized. This enemy wasn't like other ones - it wasn't easily manipulated or had incredibly predictable patterns. And it was just as strong as fast as him. He couldn't afford to pull punches. Speaking of which…

He bounced another blow back and threw his sword into the air. He punched a surprised Dust in the face, jumped up, retrieved his now-flaming sword, and swung it down, full-force.

Dust raised Ahrah, and the two swords collided.

"Ahrah, can you control these flames?" Dust questioned.

"I am at the mercy of my wielder. It's not about what I can do. It's about what you can do."

Dust, with a mighty heave, shoved the sword out of the way, and snuffed the flames out.

"Yui, I'm pretty sure I've confirmed your suspicions that the sword is alive. Most swords don't talk." Kirito noted.

"Yeah," Fidget shouted, "well neither do most…whatever you are!"

"Wow, Fidget. That was amazing. I am completely awe-struck by how well that captured the essence of his nature and turned it against him in a scathing way. He'll forever live with the scarred memories of this moment because of you." Dust said sarcastically.

"Hey, I'm not the one who started it!"

"And with lines like that, you won't be the one to finish it, either. It's not like he's hard to insult. The baldness, the ears, the lack of a nose-"

"Hey, I have a nose! It's just…small!" Kirito broke in. "What business is it of yours what size my nose is, anyway?"

"Oh, yeah, forgive me, it's not like you're trying to kill us or anything. Elysium forbid I insult you."

"At least I don't have a talking sword!"

"Do you want one?" Dust offered. "He's been getting on my nerves."

"Just…leave me out of this," Ahrah pleaded.

"And at least I'm actually talking to something," Dust continued. "What's with all of your whispering? Yui this, Yui that. Who the heck is Yui?"

Yui popped out from behind Kirito's ear. She waved nervously. "Hi."

Dust blinked. "What-"

"You can insult me all you want," Kirito shouted, raising his sword, "but don't say a word against my daughter."

"That's your daughter?"

"Yes."

Dust shook his head. "Your race is weird."

"I'm not the one covered in hair!"

"That's a big part of why your race is weird," Fidget told him. Dust gave her an approving glance.

There was silence.

"So…" Kirito began. "Are we still fighting?"

"Do you want to keep fighting?"

"Well…yeah, kind of."

Dust shrugged. "Okay, then."

Dust scooted forward at top speed. He'd taken advantage of their time spent talking to heal his wounds - though what he didn't know was that Kirito had done the same thing. Dust delivered several blows instantaneously, cutting into Kirito at several points before Kirito managed to stop his sword part-way. Kirito then turned the whole combo against him, performing almost the exact same moves he had and completing it, knocking Dust several meters away. Kirito brought his sword down, still pointed at Dust, and charged it. In two seconds, he unleashed a Vorpal Strike, aimed right as Dust's head. Dust saw the attack coming and was barely able to raise Ahrah in time - the Elucidator skittered off of Ahrah and grazed Dust's cheek. Dust saw, once again, that Kirito was stock-still but this time attacked him during this point. Three thrusts followed by a high-wave attack to knock him back, then throwing out a Dust Storm to pull him in again and repeat the combo. He did this twice before Kirito blocked the attack with his sword and materialized the other one in his hand.

"It's time to end this," he announced. "I can see your sword can't be broken, but that doesn't mean-" He was interrupted by an attempted wide slash at the throat, which he caught between his blades. He threw the blade, and Dust with it, backwards and jumped into the air, electrifying his swords, then thrust them down to throw out a quick burst of electricity. Dust, however, simply waved it out with Ahrah.

"Fidget, want to show this guy what real lightning looks like?"

"Oh, yeah! It'll be electrif-"

"Don't say it!" Dust shouted.

Fidget pouted. "Fine. Then no electricity from me."

Dust sighed. "Fid-"

He was suddenly struck by a number of quick blows, then Kirito smashed into him with his shoulder and threw out his golden sword, which Ahrah was barely able to scoot by before it impaled Dust's neck. Dust jabbed a blow into Kirito's forehead, then sliced straight down and up again, using Ahrah's magic to draw Kirito in further - but he then had to let Kirito go when he took advantage of this and stabbed him through the shoulder.

Dust backed up. "Fidget!"

"Fine!" Fidget threw out and enormous burst of lightning. It coursed through Kirito's avatar as he flickered and screamed.

"Huh. Should have done this in the first place," Dust noted. "Nice job, Fidget."

But the battle was hardly over. Suddenly, Kirito thrust his black blade out, and it caught and absorbed the lightning. After a few seconds, his pain had completely stopped, and he bounced the oncoming lightning at Dust, who barely had time to comprehend what had happened before it struck him.

As the screams sounded, Kirito launched his Deadly Sins attack. It stabbed through Dust several times, but he'd managed to recover and throw the sword out of the loop in a swift motion before the finishing blow could be dealt.

Both blocked the other's blow at the same time. Kirito glanced at their health bars. These next blows would be the final few. Both only had a quarter of their total health remaining.

"Let's finish this!" he shouted. He began The Eclipse. He held his sword back and charged it.

"He's going to try something," Ahrah informed Dust.

"I noticed."

"Did you also notice that he moves more slowly when using two swords?"

Dust closed his eyes for a second. "Fidget, I'm going to need you."

"Ahem."

"You're a given, Ahrah."

"And I'm not?" Fidget sounded offended. She had this curious way of making her offended voice incredibly cute. Dust smiled and didn't reply.

Kirito charged.

Dust slammed Ahrah into both blades, but Kirito just ducked them both underneath Ahrah and started the Sword Skill. His strikes were quick, and Dust was slashed several times before he could even react. Kirito kept going. He knew Dust would try to get in a quick push to stop the skill and pull off another one of those whirlwind-type combos. At this stage, he might not survive another. Because of this, he kept circling Dust with his slashes, making sure he was never someplace Dust could easily access him. Dust was able to dodge the final thrusts, but that was it. His health was far smaller than Kirito's.

"Daddy, look out!"

Kirito hadn't noticed the nimbat behind him. His body was torn through with electricity once again, and then several fireballs were thrown. Dust smashed into them with the whirlwind, and they became explosions. Explosions that engulfed a surprised and nearly defenseless Kirito.

This time the fire didn't clear in less than a second, and Kirito was spinning no swords. He was standing there, breathing heavily, almost completely exhausted, and with burn marks all over his avatar.

Then Dust moved, lightning-fast, behind him and plunged Ahrah through his body. Not once, not twice, not ten times, but at least thirty times, in several different places, leaving Kirito on the ground, writhing in pain. Kirito grunted and suddenly twisted about and charged up a super-powered blow, impaling Dust through the stomach, and twisting the sword in, before taking his blade back out. The vast majority of creatures would have died.

But Dust held on. Barely. Ahrah's magic and his healing factor kept him alive. But one more hit and he'd be gone. Looking at Kirito, it looked like the same for him.

So Dust charged up a blow and threw Ahrah, full force, at Kirito. The sword left his hand and went through a surprised Kirito's chest. As Dust retrieved Ahrah, Kirito's body glowed blue. He was dying.

But he moved.

Kirito got up, a fierce gleam in his eye. "I'm not dying today. But you are."

"Um, is it just me, or did that sounds really ominous? And creepy? And now I kind of want to go home," Fidget said to nobody in particular.

Kirito attacked with a powerful downward slash from both swords, which Dust barley managed to block. "Um, I think he's stronger."

"He is holding onto life through sheer willpower alone," Ahrah revealed. "But he is also gaining his life back. It appears he also has a healing factor. It won't be long before he is fully alive again."

"I really could have done without this today," Dust grunted. He broke the two sword's formation and dove his blade for Kirito's head - and Kirito grabbed it with his teeth.

"What the he-" Dust was flung over Kirito's shoulder before he could finish. Kirito threw out several further slashes and thrusts, each one of which Dust quickly parried. He'd grown to know all of this fighter's strategies and moves by now. He just needed to survive. Judging from his condition, it would only take the smallest of hits landed for Kirito to kill him.

And when Kirito's body was fully formed again, it looked the same for him. He looked desperate - ready to try anything.

And he was. Kirito ducked away and began charging one final Sword Skill. Both were at their last bits of HP. A paper cut should be enough to kill either of them. He needed to just land one hit. It was time. He unveiled his last attack: the Starburst Storm.

With both swords, he moved like lightning and hit like thunder. Dozen of strikes, incredibly fast and almost impossible to deflect - but somehow, Dust was doing it. He was keeping pace with every single swing Kirito threw, and just barely ducking all of them. Their encounters were slight - often Kirito missed him by barely the width of a hair, but he did miss him. All of Dust's energy was sapped, though. When it came time for the last attack, Kirito charged with all he had. This was his last chance to kill this boss. To win every aspect of this game forever.

For Dust, the feeling was similar. He saw the final attack coming, and realized all he could do was charge ahead with an attack of his own. He poured all of his strength and speed into this one blow. It needed to connect. He needed to win.

All three blades slammed into each other.

And both combatant were sent flying back.

And time slowed down.

Dust ran ahead, making one final overhead slash for the kill - only for Kirito to somehow get his swords crossed in time and block the last blow.

The time slow stopped. It was now strength against strength. Kirito's two sowrds fought against Ahrah with all they had, and Dust pushed against them with all he had.

Kirito saw Dust step out his right foot to gain some leverage. Not about to give it to him, he also stepped out his right foot.

And then he saw Dust smile and let go of his sword.

As the truth dawned on Kirito too late, he shouted "NO!" and thrust forward with the Elucidator and Excalibur at the exact moment Ahrah's tumbling form fell on Kirito's foot and cut into it.

Less than a millimeter from Dust's throat, both swords evaporated into thousands of glowing, star-like particles, alongside Kirito himself.

 **-KO!-**

Dust collapsed and sighed in relief. Fidget quietly sat down next to him. "You actually won."

"Yeah. I guess I did. I just remembered that, no matter where I hit him, it would still deal the same damage, and things just kinda fell into place."

"Yeah, well," Fidget said smugly, "I helped."

Dust eyed Fidget, but decided not to fight her on this one. "Yeah, you did."

"If you two are done chatting," Ahrah chastised, "would you like to pick me up?"

"Can't you fly?"

…

Meanwhile, Kirito opened his eyes to find himself in a white void with a timer counting down from ten minutes. He sighed. He had failed to defeat this boss. He'd come so close, but he still lost.

Oh, well. Maybe he'd try again tomorrow. This time he'd probably take Yui's advice and bring Asuna. Probably.

…

It looks like Sen-Mithrarin dusted this competition.

Let's start out by saying that this is easily one of the closest fights in Death Battle history. These two fighters each had slight edges and matched each other exactly in several aspects. They were virtual equals in strength, speed, and durability; even with their strongest feats measured against their strongest, and weakest measured against their weakest, the math proved each one to be barely any different from the other. They may have slight advantages (Dust is ever-so-slightly more durable, Kirito is ever-so-slightly stronger, and so on) but, because of their habits and fighting styles, this ends up making absolutely no difference. For all intents and purposes, these two were physically identical when it came to strength, reaction speed, and taking hits. I analyzed as much as I could in order to produce a winner, but this fight could have gone either way. That said, there's a fair amount of evidence in favor of it going Dust's way.

Kirito has technically fought more battles and has more feats than Dust, but Dust still easily takes the edge in terms of experience. He has all of Cassius's skill and experience combined with his own and every fighter who has previously wielded Ahrah. Kirito has been fighting for three years. Dust has the memories, experiences, and knowledge of at least ten years - and that's only counting Cassius. It's likely far, far more. And though Kirito has accomplished more, there's nothing to say that Dust couldn't have accomplished the same things if he hadn't chosen to die that day. He simply lived a shorter life than Kirito has, and so has less to say for it.

Kirito's outside system skills would be of little use. Arms Blast can't destroy a weapon that is unbreakable, which Ahrah is, and the Illusion Magic takes too long and does too little to be viable in a fight as high-speed as this one. Flight was Kirito's best ability, but even then, Dust has faced plenty of powerful flying enemies before - including Lady Tethys and Baron Kane, deity-level entities. When it comes to companions, there's little in this fight Yui can do that Ahrah can't - the best result is that they both learn of each other's physical prowess. And Dust has another companion, Fidget, who can actively help him in battle with her elemental attacks. And even though she's not invincible at all, if even Dust can't hit her before she moves out of the way, there's little chance Kirito could. And his weapons couldn't even cancel out Ahrah and Dust's magical abilities or properties because it was explicitly stated that it was "magic that was not magic." If it's not magic, it can't be canceled.

Kirito's cheating death for thirty second through willpower alone is impressive, but Dust performed a similar feat when defeating a demon that had taken control of him, so it was nothing that he hadn't seen before. Actually, there's not much in Kirito's arsenal Dust hasn't seen before. Even the massive behemoth he can turn into isn't unlike other behemoths Dust has taken down with ease. Kirito's Dual-Wielding provides a nice ace-in-the-hole, but it's not like Dust hasn't faced dual-wielding foes before, and Kirito has to change his fighting style in order to compensate for the extra blade. Since it makes him slower and easier to predict, it cancels out the extra power bonus when facing someone like Dust, who's a virtual equal to him, and against whom Kirito already had enough power to begin with. Actually, both had more than enough power. That's really what it comes down to.

Both could dish out more than the other could take. Theoretically, one full-powered blow from either combatant would be enough to kill the other fighter, so the real question wasn't who was stronger, faster, had better companions, a higher intellect, more feats, or more weaknesses - it was as simple as this: Who strikes the finishing blow first?

Assuming the fight is over within 50 moves (given their fighting styles, that's quite generous), there are over 14,000 ways the battle can end. And of these, Dust strikes the finishing blow just under 53% of the time.

Kirito may have the agility to dodge several of Dust's Combos, but if he is hit by one, it's almost impossible for him to get out of it due to his inexperience when it comes to blocking. And a Dust Combo can hit as many as a thousand times, making getting hit by even one a possible death sentence - and if Kirito can barely get out of an activated Sword Skill, which isn't even made for keeping the target in place, there's almost no way he's getting out of one of Dust's Combos, which are specifically made for drawing in enemies and keeping them there while Dust has his way with them. In addition, Kirito's Sword Skills are well-telegraphed, and Dust has the experience to figure them out very quickly. Several SAO fighters were able to do this, even ones who hadn't unlocked those very moves. It'd be a simple matter for Dust to avoid them just as easily as Kirito avoids his combos - and then take advantage of the delay inflicted on Kirito to begin the lethal combo chain. Even if Dust does get hit by one of the Sword Skills, it's not always the end of the world, considering that several actually lower Kirito's attack power or are element-based, which Dust can manipulate - and it still leaves Kirito open for attack. And while Dust's combos are complicated and intricate, many Sword Skills, while they may look impressive, often come down to simple slashes and thrusts - which Dust can Parry easily, and, in this fight, activating the time-slowing Parry effect basically gives Dust a free win.

Moreover, Kirito has a nasty habit of getting really close to his opponent and testing out their abilities, not going full-power unless he feels he really needs to, hoping to get a read on his opponent in order to give him a better strategy of winning in the long run. Great when fighting defensive or midrange players or unthinking monsters…not so great against incredibly fast and strong swordfighters, as has been proven by both Yuuki and even his own sister. This strategy plays into Dust's hands perfectly. Dust doesn't do this; he goes all-out from the start, hoping to finish the battle quickly, then adapts depending on what he experienced and who he's facing. Kirito's habit of testing the fences provides Dust with several opportunities to start combo-ing or even just use a finisher right then and there. Because of how Kirito fights, the chances of him getting through that initial barrage is rather low. Of the 53% of the time Dust wins, the battle is over within the first 5 blows 44% of the time. Not to mention that while Kirito has been killed by swordsmen equaling his skill on multiple occasions, Dust has never been defeated in a single fight.

This fight was close. Oh, so close. Their physical abilities, equal. Their slight edges in other categories, canceled out by each other. This leaves the winning factor completely decided by matching up their skill, moveset, and fighting style against each other - and Dust manages to barely take all three of these.

Without a solid way to counter Dust's superior moveset, it was Game Over for Kirito.

 **The winner is Dust.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle…

A blue pony twirls her arms in a circular motion, creating a tornado that somehow destroys a large building in a huge explosion.

VS.

A red robot twirls his arms in a circular motion, creating a tornado that somehow destroys a large building in a huge explosion.

(Rainbow Dash vs. Red Tornado)


	8. Rainbow Dash vs Red Tornado

_Episode 7: Rainbow Dash (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) vs. Red Tornado (DC Comics)_

Thousands of years ago, mankind believed everything in the world was made up of one of four elements: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. Of the four, Air was the most commonly found. It represented freedom, determination, and…tornadoes. An apt way to describe today's combatants. Rainbow Dash, the most powerful pegasus in Equestria, and Red Tornado, the Justice League's robotic defender of the skies.

Oh, just so you guys know, because Red Tornado has more robot bodies than DC has adoring fans, we'll be giving him his most-commonly used/most recent body type and take powers and feats from similar bodies into account as well. We're also taking Rainbow Dash as she is at the end of Season 7, because, well, that's all there is so far. Oh, and we're taking feats into account from comics, shows, and video games together - as long as the power level is fairly consistent. Obviously, original canon takes precedence.

That said, I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who might win a Death Battle.

 **Rainbow Dash:**

The land of Equestria is home to many unique and interesting ponies, each with their own individual dreams. Some dream of a better life, some dream of more power, some dream of great friends, and some dream of being heroes. But one pegasus just dreamed of being the fastest pony alive and finally meeting her heroes, the Wonderbolts. That pony…is Rainbow Dash.

Born to Bow Hothoof and Windy Whistles and mentored all her life by the legendary Rainbow Blaze, Rainbow Dash has always been fast. Even as a child, she didn't just keep up with adult pegasi, but she surpassed them. Rainbow just had one problem: she was kind of…clumsy. When going at high speeds, she had a tendency to crash into everything in sight, which earned her little respect for her speed and a nickname that would torture her for the rest of her life: Rainbow Crash. But no ridiculous names would keep Rainbow down. She strived to be the best and to one day join the Wonderbolts, the greatest fliers in the country. You know the Blue Angels? The Wonderbolts are that. But as ponies. Regardless, Rainbow Dash trained and fought her way to the top, and, after being the first pony in recorded history to perform the Sonic Rainboom, she finally reached it. Well, almost. A few years after that little accomplishment, she auditioned to become a member of the Wonderbolts, but nerves got the best of her and she failed. Badly. After that, she moved to Ponyville and became the official Weather Pony for the town. She was embarrassed, but determined. She knew that one day, she'd become a Wonderbolt, no matter what stood in her way.

And a lot has stood in her way, but it hasn't stopped her. Rainbow Dash is resilient, and while she's not naturally adaptable, she learns over time, and rarely repeats mistakes. She's somehow found the time to earn a black belt in Karate, but, when fighting, usually utilizes her own fighting style, which isn't…as good. This style of fighting is, well, stylish. It's meant for wowing an audience way more than it is for being effective in combat. Luckily, it's still effective enough to easily defeat dozens of changelings that have been fighting for hundreds of years. Rainbow eagerly awaits fights and challenges that come her way and meets them head-on. She likes getting around enemy defenses in order to have a face-to-face fight, and will power her way through quite a bit in order to reach that point. And while she's not the smartest pony in the world, it's virtually impossible to catch her by surprise. While flying, she's subconsciously tracking and memorizing every detail of the area around her, She's able to react to _lightning bolts_ and memorize entire history lessons just while taking a casual flight. She can even resist some levels of mind manipulation. According to Pinkie Pie, the only pony in Equestria who's naturally able to keep pace with Rainbow Dash, Rainbow is literally "too stubborn to be brainwashed." Oh, and she has magical abilities.

The ponies of Equestria are all divided into four types, each with their own special powers and/or abilities. Pegasi, most notably, have the power to fly and manipulate the weather, and Rainbow Dash excels at these two thing like nobody else. See, after Nightmare Moon escaped her celestial prison and threatened the entire world, Rainbow Dash, along with five of her best friends, went off to defeat her using the Elements of Harmony. But Nightmare Moon destroyed the Elements' physical forms, only to find out that the Elements had already found new forms as pieces of jewelry for the six ponies facing her. Rainbow Dash was granted the Element of Loyalty. Because of this, Rainbow Dash is actually a physical representation of the Element in question, and received all the powers therein. While she was previously able to clear the skies of an entire town in ten seconds flat, her manipulation over weather has become…kind of crazy.

She can create storm clouds out of thin air that are capable of surrounding and threatening an entire city, and can easily destroy other storm clouds created by those with similar powers. She can create snow and icicles, and even fire on some occasions. There have even been times where she was able to raise and lower the temperature of the air around her. And to top it all off, she can fully manipulate storms, winds, clouds, and even lightning, to the point of transforming a normal cloud into one large enough and dense enough to hold all of her falling friends, who, together, would weigh over 700 lbs, despite it being, you know, a cloud. As if that all weren't enough, somehow the Element of Loyalty has given her the ability to create explosions. No kidding - once Rainbow Dash reaches high enough speeds, she can create massive rainbow-colored explosions, capable of wiping out buildings and town-sized valleys. This is supposed to be tied into her weather manipulation abilities, but…there's no weather phenomenon that creates explosions out of thin air. It is technically possible that Rainbow Dash's control over the air around her has reached such levels that it's able to divide and reconstruct the molecular composition of the gasses that make up air, igniting a giant explosion. While that's pretty unlikely, it's one of the few ways this ability can make sense given series lore. But let's not concern ourselves with that. The point is, she can make explosions. But her best weather-controlling abilities are seen when making tornadoes. From giant tornadoes the size of mountains to tiny ones precise enough to break metal locks, she can make all kinds of cyclones - and very quickly. In less than five seconds, she and one other pegasus once created a tornado capable of knocking back dozens of Wonderbolt trainees and almost destroying an island. Scaling by Rainbow Dash's height and shape, this tornado would have easily been F6 levels, verging on F7 - larger than any tornado in recorded history. Even by herself, she's made a tornado that was capable of gathering up thousands of nearly-impossible to collect Parasprites without harming the buildings they were housed in. She can make tornadoes by flying around in circles, spinning her arms super fast, or even just flapping her wings. And though there was a time where she was incapable of creating a cyclone powerful enough to raise up and move all the water in a reservoir without the help of every other pegasus in Ponyville, she's since made even more powerful tornadoes without any help whatsoever.

But if there's one thing Rainbow Dash loves to do, it's to go fast. And man, can she go fast. She's navigated dangerous obstacle courses while moving at supersonic speeds, flew fast enough to instantly start the ground on fire, broke the sound barrier from a standstill, and even moved fast enough to be invisible to Twilight Sparkle, who's able to track other hypersonic pegasi, including the Wonderbolts, just fine. She's so good at it, she even mentored Twilight herself in flying after the latter became an Alicorn. Heck, Princess Celestia's officially stated that Rainbow Dash is the fastest and most skilled flier in Equestria, even topping out her and her sister, Luna. Luna's flown all the way from the moon before in order to help out with an emergency. Keep in mind that the moon is canonically confirmed to be of the same make, size, and distance as our own. Even lowballing this to take ten minutes, that'd still have her going at speeds of _1.4 Million MPH_. So, Rainbow's faster than that. However, we _could_ discount this feat, claiming Luna was only able to travel back and forth so quickly because of her magical relationship with the moon, as she's never shown this level of speed anywhere else, but Rainbow got plenty of other speed feats up her sleeve. She once ran - _ran_ , not flew, from a race she put together to the top of a mountain in under three seconds. Taking into account the height of the average mountain and the distance she was away from it, this feat would put her at speeds over Mach 20. She was easily able to dodge multiple lightning bolts from godly and demonic entities - and even once the _reverse stroke_ of one of those lightning bolts, which moves at a little under 1/3 the speed of light. And that's not all. After reaching speeds past Mach 5, she can perform the Sonic Rainboom. This event creates a rainbow-colored shockwave capable of rattling mountains and stretching across an entire country. Even hundreds of miles away from its starting point, it was able to shatter rock just by being nearby. And it doubles Rainbow Dash's already insane speed! Finally, while still under the effects of the first Sonic Rainboom, Rainbow Dash can create another one, again doubling her speed. Most impressive of all, not only is Rainbow Dash the only pony in Equestrian history to perform this feat, but managed to do so when she was only a filly - given various instances throughout the show, it's fair to say she did this when she was about nine. And her speed and abilities have improved greatly since then.

But speed isn't the only edge she brings to the table. Whether it be from the Element of Loyalty (man, that thing is the gift that keeps on giving) or her own natural talent, Rainbow Dash has wowed all of her friends with not only speed, but strength and durability as well. She carried an entire porch with four other ponies on it with one hoof and didn't break a sweat, broke through steel bolts with a single kick, and smashed through solid brick effortlessly. There was one time she smashed through a giant pile of rocks and was dizzied - but she's since taken much worse and got up with no negative effects - like the time she was thrown through a building, or when she was hit by a blow that sent her through several trees and even boulders, or the time she withstood a full blast of adult dragon fire. Even Spike, a baby dragon, has fire hot enough to melt steel, and a full-grown dragon's fire is supposed to be exponentially stronger. All of these she took and didn't even blink. Heck, just for a mach cone to form around her body, which it has several times, she'd be going through 11.1 Gs. Rainbow Dash has consistently been one of Equestria's most physically-impressive ponies.

So she might as well put that impressiveness to good use, right? Rainbow's had many adventures, like the time she found out her favorite fictional heroine, Darin' Do, was real, and promptly went on her next adventure and saved her life. Three times, She's broken several world records, won several competitions, including the Best Young Flier's competition when she was much younger, and led her team to victory during the Equestria Games, taking second place only to the Wonderbolts. Keep in mind that an average Wonderbolt's top speed is over 8,000 MPH, while Fluttershy, the fastest pony on Rainbow Dash's team besides herself, had a top speed of less than 1,000 MPH. And she still nearly beat them. Rainbow Dash has lifted and carried a boulder that would weigh over fifty tons and effortlessly kicked logs out of full-grown oak trees. Just breaking one of these trees would require over thirty tons of force. She even took a full-fledged roar from a dragon that shook mountains just by snoring. To move a large mountain just one inch would require 13.7 kilotons of TNT - and that roar was certainly much more than that. She's taken out dozens of changelings and pirates at once, survived and breathed in the vacuum of space, and, finally, after saving the world six times and topping the Wonderbolt Reserves, she eventually achieved her life's dream and became a member of the Wonderbolts.

But not everything always works out for her. Despite her years of experience, she can still mess things up and crash - like during her first day as a Wonderbolt, which earned her back her old nickname. Beyond that, her level of power is often inconsistent, and she can't always control the tornadoes she creates. She's cocky, easily distracted, and has a very difficult time choosing between different options. She'll spend hours obsessing over a simple choice and end up going way overboard in a lie to avoid having to make the choice at all. Oh, and she's heavily susceptible to magic spells. In addition, just like all of her friends that became representatives for the Elements of Harmony, if she decides to completely go against what she represents or just gives it up, she will lose all extra powers and abilities the Element granted her. So, if, for whatever reason, she permanently betrays her friends, she'll lose out on a lot of her abilities. Finally, her biggest downside is…lack of accomplishments. Sure, she's done a lot for an athlete, but for a fighter, not so much. She's helped defeat several god-like beings through use of the Elements of Harmony, sure, but by herself, the most she's done is defeat a couple small-time villains or a few dozen magical changelings. She has very little battle experience, and it leaves her confused and panicked during fights.

But she's still managed to hold her own in every battle she's been in. Rainbow Dash may not be a veteran of war, but she's still one of the most impressive fighters Equestria has ever seen.

 _After being thrown from a magical cloud by the demon Runt, Rainbow Dash steadies herself and charges back at the cloud, full speed. As she moves, she shouts._

" _This is my sky, my domain, and you guys are just a bunch of mean passengers. You want to get physical? Let's rumble like it's the apple crumble in the jungle!"_

 _The demons above the cloud laugh and shout back as they charge up a burst of lightning. "Your frustration is delicious. Thank you. And consider your threat ignored." They launch the lightning, seeking to evaporate Rainbow Dash with one strike._

 _But as the lightning heads toward her, Rainbow wraps around it, crossing the lightning with ease and rendering it ineffective. "Consider your faces lame! Prepare to find out why the fillies look up to me whether I'm in the sky or not!"_

 **Rainbow Dash:**

Name: Rainbow Dash

Species: Pegasus

Age: 18+

Height: 3'10"/ 117 cm

Weight: 165 lbs / 75 kg

Occupation: Wonderbolt

Doesn't like pie

May have two middle names: "Danger" and "Professionalism"

Owns a turtle named Tank

 **Abilities:**

Hypersonic Flight

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Senses & Memory

Explosion Creation

Weather Creation

Weather Manipulation

Sonic Rainboom

Karate Black Belt

TORNADOES MAN

 **Feats:**

Helped defeated an entire army three times

Lifted a 53.4 ton boulder

Broke through several trees casually

Dodged lightning bolts

Dodged a lightning bolt reverse stroke

Reached a mountain and back in less than five seconds

Easily creates F3 Tornadoes on her own

Created an F6-F7 Tornado with one other pegasus

Can manipulate the weather of entire cities

Took dragon fire

Was slammed into mountains, buildings, boulders, and trees

Tanked a mountain-shaking roar from a dragon

Became a superhero for a short time, twice

Helped Darin' Do on her adventures

The fastest pony in Equestria

Helped defeat star-level beings

Took 2nd Place at Equestria Games

Won several worldwide competitions

Broke over 12 World Records

 **Weaknesses:**

Over-relies on friends

Cocky

Easily distracted

Little combat experience

Will sometimes mess up while flying, putting her in serious danger

Lack of control

Not very adaptable

No resistance to magic whatsoever

…

 **Red Tornado:**

The cold reaches of space stretch out farther than any man's imagination can understand. Such a vast area is home to many strange creatures - a nihilistic society dependent on technology, a race of telepathic bats, and beings so powerful, many would call them gods. And, yet, in all the universe, only one being was capable of becoming the Red Tornado.

Ulthoon was an Air Elemental, a being made of air with incredible levels of power over wind, from the planet Xalthor. Unmatched in his power, he went across the universe searching for fights and conquering the planets of those who couldn't best him. His nature as an elemental meant most creatures weren't even able to survive being near him, so taking over entire solar systems turned out to be pretty easy. Until he set his sights on Rann, and challenged the scientist Adam Strange to a duel. Surprisingly, Ulthoon lost. After finding out that the basic reason why he lost was that he was a bad guy (I don't know, it just gets weirder from here), Ulthoon decided to give up his tyrannical ways and fight in the name of good. But half of him didn't take it so well. So he split into two entities, the Tornado Champion and the Tornado Tyrant, and did battle with his evil half. After losing, the Champion lured the Tyrant to earth and had the Justice League destroy him. Disheartened, the Champion decided to move to a different universe in hopes of finding a new identity. Then he stumbled across a secret project of T.O. Morrow's: A Robot built to infiltrate the JSA and destroy it from within. Unknown to Morrow, the Champion inserted his consciousness and power into this new, robot body and became one of the world's greatest superheroes. Thus was born the Red Tornado.

Red Tornado's a powerhouse in the wind department, and holds his own in skill with his thousands of years of fighting experience. He's also one of the most inconsistently-powered members of the Justice League. One minute he's taking punches from Superman and delivering his own back, and the next he's destroyed by a couple of hits from the original Commander Steel, who, at that point, could only lift 1000 pounds. Luckily, there is a legitimate explanation. See, while Ulthoon is absurdly powerful, he's completely and totally restricted by the body he's placed in. He can't get out of it by himself, and even if he could, he'd dissipate and die within 24 hours - though his true form brought Superman, Green Lantern, and the Flash to their knees just by being nearby. The robot bodies he's gotten to contain his power are kind of all over the place. Sometimes he's dodging blows from Wonder Woman - and other times he's caught in the spray from a Fire Hydrant. Because of this, we're going to go by the power level of his newest body before New 52 hit, and take feats from ones comparable to it throughout comic history. It's the best way we can be fair to old Reddy here.

Red Tornado is a fighter who relies on his arsenal, that being wind. When fighting among other heroes, his primary tactic is to blow enemies into the paths of others who can properly take care of them. However, when he's going one-on-one with an opponent, he utilizes a keep-away style of fighting, never letting his opponent close in on him or get close enough to damage his robotic body. He's become excellent at leading others on and dodging blows. He can even dodge point-blank gunfire with ease. This is because his mind has adapted itself into the robotic body, and so his brain runs as fast as a supercomputer. He literally sees the world in slow-motion and can react to the fastest things because of that - like the time he dodged lightning. That was pretty cool. But he prefers to fight at a distance, where he has all the advantages - and with his powers, those advantages are pretty huge.

Red Tornado can manipulate the winds and air fully, even to the point of allowing others to breathe underwater or creating vacuums in the atmosphere. He can form winds around him to create a forcefield. While behind this forcefield, it's pretty much impossible for any projectile to hit him, and it can take blows from super-powered beings without breaking. It does require a lot of concentration to keep up, but if he's using this ability, he's already completely focused on defense, so it doesn't matter that much. He can vibrate fast enough to become invisible, and even fly around completely unseen. If things get really out of hand, he can even absorb air and wind around him and use it to feed into his next attacks. But his bread and butter is tornadoes. It's kinda what he's named after. And the tornadoes don't disappoint. By twirling himself around or just rotating his hands super quickly, he can create massive tornadoes capable of leveling skyscrapers with ease. A quick blow from these tornadoes is strong enough to knock down an unsuspecting Superman, break through the side of a mountain, and even hold off a crazed Hal Jordan. When these tornadoes reach full power, they've lobotomized Black Lanterns, destroyed space stations, and even blown up an Imperiax Probe, which was tough enough to withstand Darkseid's Omega Beams. You know, the beams that can effortlessly destroy planets? However, exerting more pressure with his tornadoes than his body can handle will end up destroying Red Tornado - like with that probe, where not only did he die, but him even surviving long enough to pull that feat off was considered a miracle. And while creating giant tornadoes is impressive and all, he can also create miniature ones instantly, with them being strong and precise enough to destroy steel locks. Oh, and by creating a tornado directly below him, Red Tornado can fly all around - even in outer space, which shouldn't be scientifically possible. He's super fast while doing it, too.

Red Tornado has wowed superheroes with his speed. He's outraced fighter jets before with ease, the fastest of which can move nearly 5,000 MPH. He's raced from New Mexico to Japan in under an hour, kept up with an evil version of Vixen, who can move as fast as the fastest animals in the world combined, and straight-out vanish by moving faster than the eye can see - that's over nine thousand miles per hour. He also made it to the moon, stayed a while, had a conversation or two, and then went back, all in a little over a day. But while his speed is pretty defining, it's not all that's superhuman about him. He can lift more than is physically possible for a human - the current world record for most weight ever lifted by one man is just under 7,000 lbs, and Red Tornado has shown the ability to break this easily. He once smashed through a small boulder, casually bent a steel bar, and lifted a large piece of steel roughly the same size as him while at the bottom of the ocean. Speaking of which, he can survive at the bottom of the ocean, the pressure of which can reach levels of nearly 16,000 PSI. In comparison, the average air pressure inside a tire is a mere 32 PSI. He wrestled Red Volcano, a bigger, stronger version of him, into a pool of boiling lava and stayed in there for three minutes before he started to melt. He took an explosion that destroyed a building without blinking, survived atmospheric reentry, and was once hit by an anti-aircraft missile and was more surprised than anything else. Keep in mind that some of these missiles have an explosive yield of up to 15 kilotons of TNT.

And from his years serving with the Justice League, Red's found himself dealing with a lot of things he shouldn't have been able to. He led the battle against the Star-God Aquarius, helped defeat the legendary Iron Hand, and battled Swamp Thing to a standstill. He became one of the elemental protectors of the world, representing air, and mentored the Teen Titans for quite a while. He's also sacrificed himself to save the world a bunch of times - like against Nekron, the personification of the struggle of death, or like against Amazo, who then reprogrammed Red's body to use for himself because it was so good at distributing and handling unnatural power. He's defeated several villains, including stronger versions of himself, such as Red Volcano and Red Inferno, and even an evil Vibe, who was able to create vibrations strong enough to _shake the earth apart_. Red Tornado accomplished this by keeping Vibe in the air whenever he was able to, since this version of Vibe couldn't use his powers if he wasn't connected to the ground. He even got married and adopted a daughter, basically solidifying a life on earth as a superhero. This later led to one of the worst experiences in Red Tornado's life, however. In a bid to potentially finally become human, Red Tornado temporarily "permanently" transferred his life essence and powers to a specifically modified human body. However, this body had been altered by Solomon Grundy, one of the League's deadliest foes, in order to weaken Red Tornado the longer he used it. After some weeks, he could barely function, and Solomon Grundy came to threaten his family and kill him. After destroying a bunch of evil robots, Red Tornado tried to fight Grundy, but Grundy literally grabbed his arm and ripped it right off. _Then he ate it_. UGH. So, what did Red Tornado, now one-armed, dying, super weak, and bleeding out, do? He used his remaining arm to create a tornado so powerful, it stopped Grundy in his tracks - and _then tore him in half_. That may be one of the most awesome things I've ever seen.

But the fact that he let himself in that situation should speak pretty clearly. Red Tornado isn't the brightest bulb around. He's been easily manipulated plenty of times, and has been destroyed by everything from a bunch of evil tribal aliens to a stray zeta ray to a single punch from Starfire. There's a reason he does his best to keep his opponents away from his physical body. It's tough, yes, but not invulnerable. And he has little to no options to close-quarters-combat - in fact, he really sucks at it. I can understand being defeated in hand-to-hand by Batman or Green Arrow, but when a few street thugs can leave you with nothing but your head remaining, you might want to invest in a few boxing lessons. Oh, yeah, and, for whatever reason, he gets messed up really good by lightning. In addition, there's a shut-off switch on his neck - if hit hard enough, he'll turn right off and be completely helpless.

But helpless is something this red protector of the world rarely is. Many criminals across the galaxy have found out that when you mess with the Justice League's robot hero, he'll blow you away. Literally.

 _As winds whip around Solomon Grundy, he laughs at the tornado the former robot had conjured up. "I'm immovable!"_

" _I wasn't trying to move you." Red Tornado replies, gritting his all-too-real teeth. "Under normal circumstances, it takes winds of 70 MPH to pull thick branches from a tree, and 150 MPH to blow that tree over."_

 _Solomon Grundy grunts. He suddenly realizes that, despite his best efforts, he's not moving forward. The tornado is becoming too strong._

" _But at 350 MPH?" Red Tornado continues. "That'll snap the tree in half." His eyes glint._

 _Grundy begins to slide back. He digs his feet into the ground, refusing to move for the hero._

" _So imagine how you'll feel with winds over 550."_

 _There's a heave and roar lost in the winds as Solomon Grundy's top half separates and flies off._

 **Red Tornado:**

Name: Tornado Champion (Ulthoon)

Species: Elemental

Age: 5000+

Height: 6'1"/ 185 cm

Weight: 325 lbs / 147 kg

Occupation: Member of the Justice League of America

Used to have a regenerating body like Wolverine

Has 1/4 of the Anti-Life Equation stored inside him

One robotic shell was made into a containment suit for Wildfire

 **Abilities:**

Hypersonic Flight

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Senses & Memory

Wind Manipulation

Wind Absorption

TORNADOES MAN

 **Feats:**

Helped defeated an entire army several times

Lifted a 21 ton steel plate

Broke through a boulder casually

Dodged lightning bolts

Reached Japan and back in less than two hours

Reached the moon and back in less than two days

Easily creates F5 Tornadoes on his own

Creates F9 Tornadoes on rare occasions

Can manipulate the winds of entire cities

Took a missile to the face

Was slammed into mountains, buildings, boulders, and trees

Survived at the bottom of the ocean

Went into lava for a few minutes

Helped the Justice League many times

Equaled Vixen & Swamp Thing in combat

Helped defeat star-level beings

 **Weaknesses:**

Over-relies on backup

Shut-off switch

If body is destroyed, will die in 24 hours without a new one

Easily manipulated

Terrible in hand-to-hand

Lack of variety

No resistance to magic whatsoever

Was destroyed several times

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all. It's time for a Death Battle!

…

"Here," Batman stated flatly. He pointed at the screen in front of him, specifically at a blinking red dot. He glanced at the five superheroes gathered at the Watchtower. Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Red Tornado. He'd called this meeting specifically with them in mind. "This is where the dimensional energy seems to be gravitating." 

"And that means…?" Green Lantern questioned.

"The Dominators have been tracking all activity in these seven dimensions for the last two weeks. Something's up, and six of those dimensions spread out from this one. Not to mention that dimensional portals have recently been opened across these, including two for this one. All the energy from these dimensions is pouring into this. It means that any neighboring universes can accidentally find themselves traveling to this one, even through simple teleportation. And guess who's dimension happens to be one of the ones next to it?"

"Ours?" Flash asked.

Batman nodded.

Superman put his hand to his chin. "That means that even just using a Boom Tube runs the risk of trapping whoever enters it into that dimension, much less any other way of extra-dimensional travel."

Batman turned back to the screen. "It's worse than that. All of this…activity has been disrupting the barrier between dimensions. Any organic material crossing it would be instantly obliterated. That means that any organism that happens to end up in this dimension out of the seven surrounding it would die immediately. From the looks of it, already have. All of you need to know about this, but right now, only one of you can do something about it. We're going to need Red Tornado to enter this dimension and scout it out for us. Find out all he can. Specifically, why all this is happening, and, if necessary, how he can put a stop to it."

Red Tornado nodded. "I will do whatever I can to assist you in this matter."

Batman approached him and handed him two discs, each with blinking lights. "Transportation devices. They'll allow you to travel between dimensions. One to get you there, and one to get you back. The last one will only work after three days. Be careful with them."

"You may have total faith in me, Batman," the robot stated. He took the discs and used one right away, vanishing into thin air.

"As for the rest of you," Batman continued, "holes in reality have been popping up as a result of this imbalance. You're going to be very busy."

…

"Twilight!" Rainbow Dash called as she flew across Ponyville. She hadn't seen her friend in two days, and had just assumed she was in the middle of one of her book-sorting vacations, but she had just found the Castle of Friendship abandoned, except for a clueless Spike. She was starting to get worried.

Rainbow landed on the street next to Pinkie Pie, who was out selling baked goods on a cart. "Hey, Pinkie, have you seen-"

"No time for talk! Time for taste!" Pinkie shouted excitedly. She grabbed six different cupcakes and smashed them into Rainbow's mouth all at once. She bounced up and down. "So, what do you think?!"

With one horrifying gulp, Rainbow got the batch down. She shook her head disgustedly. "I think they'd be better separate."

"You want separate? I've got separate! I've got cakes so separate, they'll make you wish YOU were separate! I can separate the vanilla from the chocolate and the strawberry from the vanilla and the chocolate from the strawberry! It's like the-"

"Pinkie!" Rainbow interrupted. "Have you seen Twilight?"

"Of course I have, silly!"

"TODAY."

"Oh. Well, then no."

Rainbow Dash put her hoof to her head like she was experiencing a headache. "Ugh. You know what? It's fine. She probably went off to keep Starlight company during her visit to the Changeling Kingdom and forgot to tell anypony."

"Who forgot to tell anypony what?" Came a voice from a few feet ahead. Starlight Glimmer was walking toward them, toting a cart full of luggage. "Hello, everypony!"

"Starlight!" Pinkie shouted. "How did it go? What kind of food did they have? Did you start a war? Did THEY start a war? How many adventures did you go on? Two? Three? Four thousand eight hundred and twenty? AND WHAT KIND OF FOOD DID THEY HAVE?!"

Starlight was quite used to Pinkie's antics by now. She laughed lightly. "I had a great time-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Rainbow Dash stopped her. "Where's Twilight?"

Starlight tilted her head, confused. "Is she gone?"

"I can't find her anywhere, and nopony I talk to knows where she is! I thought that maybe she left with you at the last second-"

"She didn't." Starlight glanced around. "That's…not good. I'll check at the Tree of Harmony."

"I'll check over at Zecora's."

"And I'll check inside this octuple-layered cake!"

Starlight teleported away, Rainbow flew off, and Pinkie dove into her cake.

…

Red Tornado appeared without any difficulties. The area was bright and cheery, and at first it was hard to see. When his robotic eyes adjusted, he saw bright green hills verging on a dark forest. And, in the distance, a small town, filled with…horses? They were like none he'd ever seen in all his travels. And…was that one flying towards him? 

That she was. Rainbow stopped as soon as she saw the weird giant red creature standing on the ground. She'd never seen anything like it. She considering flying away to tell Starlight and the others, but curiosity got the best of her. She slowly approached it.

"Hey!" she shouted out. "Are you…alive?"

Its voice shocked her.

Red Tornado spoke without much hesitation. He was curious to learn more about the life here, and Batman had said that he was to find out as much as he could. "That would be a subjective matter, I am afraid."

"Oh, so you do talk."

"Indeed. My designation is Red Tornado. I represent the Justice League of America, and am here to discover why there has been so much dimensional activity in this region of space."

Rainbow blinked. "Okay, so I'm not even going to pretend I understood any of that. I'm Rainbow Dash, but," she smirked, "you probably already knew that."

"Rainbow Dash," Red stated. The words sounded strange from his mouth. "An interesting designation, but not as strange as others I have heard. It is a pleasure to meet you." He extended his hand.

Rainbow looked at it, then back to her own hoof before shaking. This was weird.

Red was suddenly receiving a message.

"Batman to Red Tornado. Come in, Red Tornado."

Red clicked his earpiece. "Red Tornado here."

"We were able to temporarily boost the radio signal in order to reach you. It will only last for a few seconds. It appears the destabilization started after that dimension was infiltrated by a flying creature in blue. We suspect the party may have done this on purpose, and destruction of the creature would avert the crisis. I can send an image of it into your mind."

Red glanced at the flying blue pony hovering in the air in front of him. "No need. I have already found the culprit. Red Tornado out."

"Wait," Rainbow questioned, "the culprit of wha-"

Red Tornado's fist smashed into her face and sent her flying several feet back. "You have destabilized the dimensional fabric of this area and put trillions upon trillions of lives in danger. I apologize, but you must be eliminated in order to save them."

"What? I didn't do anything!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "But if you think you can take me down, you have no idea who you're dealing with!"

 **-FIGHT!-**

Rainbow Dash moved instantly, closing in on Red Tornado, but he'd had experience with this tactic before. He ducked to the left side as Rainbow zoomed right past him. She stopped after a few feet, surprised, and he grabbed one of her back hoofs and slammed her into the ground. He then raised his foot over her head and stamped down, intending to end this quickly. But when he stamped, Rainbow wasn't there anymore. She'd broken free of his grip and flew up into the air. Again, she charged forward at Red, but he knew she wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. As she drew near, he waved his hand and let loose a huge gust of air, sending her reeling back. He then drew back his fist and launched himself forward at Rainbow.

Rainbow shook off the gust. "Hey, guess what? I can do that too!" She threw her arms in front of her and a windstorm followed it, knocking the moving Red Tornado down. She flew up into the air and flew in a circle, forming dozens of storm clouds which threw lightning down at Red. He instantly dodged three bolts, and then, much to Rainbow's surprise, he raised his hands and they began spinning. In just a few seconds, a massive tornado had formed, and it rose up into the sky, displacing all of the storm clouds and catching Rainbow in its vacuum.

"Woah!" Rainbow shouted as she was sucked in. The tornado had a strong pull, but Rainbow knew she'd made stronger. She steadied herself and flew counter to the tornado, gaining more and more speed until it finally dissipated. She sighed in relief - and was then surprised by a speedy punch from an airborne Red Tornado.

Seeing the miniature tornado his legs had become, Rainbow Dash was visibly upset. "What? No fair! I have to use these wings to fly, but you get carried around by tornadoes?! That's so much cooler!"

"Your ability to reverse that tornado was most impressive," Red Tornado declared. "And those storm clouds you created - I presume you have some control over weather?"

"Yeah, well, that's not all I've got," Rainbow announced, and suddenly she was right in front of him with her back hooves planted in his robotic chest. He let out an "Ugh!" as he flew backwards. This creature was very fast-

"Ugh!" Another kick, this one from right above. It shoved Red to the ground and nearly damaged his body. He shook his head. "I need time." He began twirling his hands, and winds began forming around him, encasing him in a bubble of windstorms. He grunted. This protection took a lot of concentration, and that didn't leave much to come up with a plan. But Red knew he needed a plan to beat this creature. It had to have weaknesses of some kind. What could they be?

The creature, Rainbow Dash, had unleashed several physical attacks on the barrier. It mattered little. That shield had withstood blows from- _URGH!_ Red Tornado was flung backwards. He hovered upwards instantly. Amazing. Rainbow Dash had managed to use her abilities over weather to break through the field. Her control of it may rival his own. But there was one thing he was unrivaled in.

"Hiya!" Rainbow shouted as she flew upwards at Red, readying a karate kick. Red appeared to be distracted, but he still noticed her in time to scoot out of the way. She would have stopped the moment she didn't hit him, but he had already turned around and blew her backwards with a gust of air. He then twirled his hands and began creating another tornado, this one doubling the original's size and power. Rainbow backed up, eyes widening. She'd never faced someone who could do that so easily before. Well, not without the Elements, anyway. The tornado moved forward, trying to pull her in, but she resisted. She'd faced lots of tornadoes before, and she-

Was flung backwards as she whirled around and around in a brand-new red-colored tornado that had just been made. What? There was no way. How did he have the energy left to make another? She broke out of this one with far more difficulty than she had thought it would take and shook her head. Then something slowly dawned on her as she looked forward and saw dozens of enormous tornadoes lining the sky. She may be somewhat outmatched here.

"This but a fraction of my power," Red Tornado proclaimed. "You cannot win. Give up now, and I will make it painless."

"What a coincidence!" Rainbow shouted back. "I was about to say the same thing!" She bit down and charged forward. Full speed. She rammed straight into a tornado - and out the other end without trouble. She gasped in relief, but didn't stop to think about it. She charged through two other tornadoes and rammed into Red Tornado - who took the blow as an opportunity to throw her back into a tornado.

He then moved his arms, commanding the tornadoes to converge on the one Rainbow Dash was in. He needed to ensure she didn't escape this one. He raised his arms, and it grew in size and intensity. He paused for a moment, watching the various movements inside out it, showing Rainbow trying and failing to get out. He just needed to wear her down before going in for a final blow.

But she had other ideas. As he watched, suddenly the clouds in the sky began moving. They flew towards the tornado he'd created, and, when they were sucked in, they began distributing themselves throughout the tornado. As the color changed from red to white, there was a mighty burst of air, and the tornado shattered, blowing out in all directions, leaving a battered, but fierce, Rainbow Dash where it once was.

"Your strategy is commendable," Red proclaimed. "Utilizing your more advanced control over-" He was interrupted by a kick that slammed him into the ground.

"You know, I usually don't mind when somebody's calling me awesome and smart, but, for some reason, when you do it, it's really annoying." Rainbow told him. She grabbed the cowl of his cape and lifted it, then twirled around, throwing Red into the distance.

Red shook his head. She was right, in a sense. It was not a good idea to keep her ego boosted, to encourage the idea that she could actually defeat him. He needed to steady himself while he was soaring to he could stabilize and gain control of the battlefield again.

He raised his body and his legs began twirling again, creating a miniature torna- _AGH!_ Rainbow was suddenly there, with another kick, knocking him off balance and further away - then she flew above him, easily surpassing the speed she'd thrown him with, and hit him again as he came towards her. He landed in the dirt and stood up. His outer shell had a dent in it. That…was disturbing. He'd let her have her way for far too long. It was long past due he stopped holding back.

Rainbow raced in circles above him. "So, was that whole tornado show really just a tiny bit of your power? Come on, let's see the whole thi-"

She was met with an answer in the form of a blow to the jaw. The resulting impact sent her upwards at speeds shattering the sound barrier. "If you insist," Red replied.

She steadied herself and rubbed her jaw with one hoof. That'd hurt. But see if he could get the drop on her agai-

With a shout, she flew further upwards from another blow. The speeds she was moving at were beginning to light fire to the air itself. She flew to the right to dodge a punch, but was caught by the hand of Red Tornado. She struggled to get out, but it wasn't as easy this time. "What are you made of? Pure metal?!"

"As a matter of fact…" Red informed her. He spun around and threw her back down, then put on a burst of wind so as to catch up to her falling form and throw out a massive downward tornado, sending her crashing into the ground with enough force to create a small crater in the earth.

Rainbow slowly, dizzily, got up. She was bruised and beaten, and one of her wings was injured. She could still fight-

Red Tornado grabbed her neck and drove it into the ground, then began flying right above ground level, dragging Rainbow's body through the earth. Dirt and rocks and even some blood flew behind them for several yards, until Red flew up, further and further, until he reached the upper atmosphere, then turned around and began flying downward, intent on smashing Rainbow's breaking body into the ground at hypersonic speeds.

But Rainbow wasn't having that. She was bruised, but she hadn't lost. She'd come back from worse. Her eyes sprung open. She broke free of Red's grasp with a headbutt and flew downwards behind him before smashing down with her two front hoofs, utilizing the momentum Red Tornado had already built up against him. Before he could react properly, he'd been smashed into the same crater she had just gotten out of.

Rainbow flew up, loosely flying to one side due to the damaged wing. "You aren't the only one who can make tornadoes, you know." She flew around in a circle, to Red's horror, and a massive tornado appeared. He twirled an arm, sending out another tornado to match it - only for Rainbow to rush into it and create a rainbow-colored explosion that instantly destroyed the tornado. She then grabbed Red once more and threw him into the center of her own tornado. She waited for a few seconds while he struggled, then dove inside and piledrived Red through the tornado's center and into the ground. She instantly rose up again and launched a barrage of smaller tornadoes, each one of which pounded into Red Tornado's quickly-giving-way body. She focused and flew in circles for only a couple seconds - and then there was another tornado. She did it again, and again until there were dozens of tornadoes all grouped up in the same area. She dove down and threw Red into one with another explosion.

Red Tornado was being tossed around like a rag doll, and he didn't like that. He flew outside of the tornado, but another one instantly sucked him up and then spat him back into the first. He came to a stop in the center of it, where there was the least amount of pressure, and took the opportunity to look over himself. His body had a crack. A giant crack reaching from the top of his head to the bottom of his left foot. That was dangerous. Too dangerous. She'd surprised him, but only one of them was walking away from this. And he'd seen too many battles to believe it was going to be her. Her wing was damaged - her flight was limited. He was yet to be properly impeded. It was time to end this.

He reached out his arms and pushed out an enormous burst of air - more powerful than any seen during this battle. It instantly dispelled every tornado and knocked Rainbow into the ground.

"What?!" She shouted, shocked. Then, seeing a rather angry Red Tornado in front of her, she realized what had happened. "Oh. Well, this suc-"

Red backhanded her into the air. She steadied quickly and threw out dozens of small tornadoes, but he did the exact same, matching each one of hers and dissolving it. She gulped and formed a giant tornado quickly, but he just charged right through it as though it wasn't even there. He grabbed her neck and, with a head butt that matched her previous one, knocked her further back into the air. She dove down and flew forward, trying to get in a hit good enough to break that metal body - but he wasn't there. She looked all around. He wasn't there anymore.

That's when she felt the punch. She flew backwards and bit her lip in pain. The punch had been very specifically aimed at her damaged wing. It was going to be harder than ever to - another blow struck her, this time in the head. And then an mountain-sized red-colored tornado appeared out of thin air.

 _He's invisible_ , Rainbow realized. She couldn't defend against an invisible opponent. _Well, maybe he's not_ , she thought hopefully. _Maybe he's just moving too fast for me to see him, because then_ \- She was interrupted when something grabbed her damaged wing and dragged her upwards. She heard a voice.

Red Tornado was secretly relieved she couldn't spot him. She'd proven surprisingly good at reacting to his attacks, but when she didn't know where the attacks were coming from, it was much harder. She'd proven very tough, but she was organic and he was not. He knew how to end this. But first, he needed to bring down that ego he'd foolishly raised. Somehow, the more this creature believed in herself, the more powerful she became.

"If you ever thought you had a chance of winning this, you were mistaken. I am a former deity transformed into the greatest of all technical creations. I have fought wars and beaten foes beyond your understanding. You have great power, I recognize that, but my power has stood up to gods. Now, this ends."

He rose above the atmosphere and into space. In the distance, he could see the moon shining brightly. "There's no air in space. I have no need for such things, but you…you have failed." He let go of Rainbow Dash's panicked body, and flew backwards. "Perhaps, in another life, we may have been friends. I'm sorry. But I have faced many like you." He turned and flew back down to the planet's surface.

Rainbow Dash inhaled. He was right. She should suffocate in space. But the Element of Loyalty had always ensured she didn't. She was beaten, broken, battered, bruised, and probably a lot of other adjectives that started with "B." Unfortunately for Red, though, that list included breathing. And she was going to win.

Eyes lighting up in anger, she dove down, faster than she'd ever gone before. "You have _never_ fought anypony like me," she shouted to the planet. She focused internally, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes. In front of her, where there was once empty air, there was a shocked Red Tornado. She grinned. "I see you."

Then, going full speed downward, broken wing trailing out, giving all it was worth, a cone formed around her. Then she broke through it, creating an rainbow soundwave that stripped the trees of their leaves, rocked the mountains in the distance, and reached the horizon. She was moving far faster - the Rainboom had doubled her speed, and she left a rainbow trail with every move she made. She smashed right into Red Tornado, and, while dragging him down through the atmosphere, another cone formed around them, and another Sonic Rainboom rocked the skies. Moving at speeds never before seen, Red Tornado was smashed into the ground, creating a crater ten times the size of hers. His body fractured all over. She pulled him up again and, still trailing rainbows and moving at insane speeds, kicked him into a series of clouds, then, with a wave of her arms, transformed them into storm clouds. Red was wracked with lightning, and he fell to the ground, smoking.

He looked up at Rainbow racketeering towards him and threw up his wind barrier - but it was smashed to pieces just by Rainbow Dash touching it on her way to destroy him. He managed to barely duck under her grasp. Then, turning around, he spun both arms at incredible speeds, creating a tornado capable of destroying cities. Rainbow turned and flew straight into its heart, attempting to reach Red Tornado.

"A tornado with winds over 350 MPH can snap skyscrapers in half," he shouted out. "This tornado has winds over 700. I could-"

"YOU COULD SHUT UP!" Rainbow shouted back. "You aren't the only one who's stood up to gods!" She put on a burst of speed and charged right through the center of the tornado. The moment she reached Red, she grabbed his hands and, with considerable strain, tore them off his arms. Red Tornado stumbled back and gazed at her in shock, lifting his stumps filled with sparking wires and leaking oil. "That…that's impossible."

"A lot of things were impossible before I did them," Rainbow told him proudly. Then, in a mocking voice, "Now, this ends." She charged up and smashed into his fractured and broken body, and, with a giant, rainbow-colored explosion, tore the whole thing to pieces.

"Yeah, that was awesome," Rainbow affirmed to herself as she set down on the ground.

Behind her, the wind began to stir.

Then it spun.

Then it broke out into a massive hurricane of death that blotted out the sun.

Rainbow felt the insane pull of the Air Elemental and turned around, eyes surprised, trying to keep herself on the ground. "What…what's that?!"

The storm spoke. "I am Ulthoon. I am free. And you are dead."

It pulled all the air in with a mighty force, and Rainbow Dash found herself sliding toward it. "No! No! I'm not…going…like this!" But, even with her control over the weather, it was getting harder and harder to keep herself from getting sucked in.

Then a blue wormhole opened up.

"Ah, here I am! All this stupid dimensional calibration in order to not die here…I had to adjust the dimensional barrier, like, eight times!" Bowser declared triumphantly. He then realized that the sky was dark and there was a giant wind monster of death in front of him. He blinked. "Uh, maybe I'll just get some Chuckola Cola and come back."

But it was too late. Ulthoon spotted him. "You!" it hissed. "You're the one who's really been causing these changes!"

Bowser fumbled with the remote that had opened the wormhole and dropped it. "Uh, what? No! You've got me all wrong! I just stopped by here on my way to, uh, Switzerland. They've got great skiing!"

"You will pay!"

"How much? 20? 50? I have credit!"

Ulthoon flew towards Bowser, who panicked and flew back through the wormhole. Ulthoon began following, but halfway through, the hole closed, cutting Ulthoon in two and destroying him permanently. He instantly dissipated and spread throughout the atmosphere.

 **-KO!-**

Rainbow blinked. "Well, that was weird." She checked herself over. "Hey, bonus, I'm alive! Now, what was I doing before? Oh, yeah! I have to check back with the others about Twilight and brag to them about how I totally destroyed this evil robot thing!"

…

Whew, that must've been a whirlwind of pain for Ulthoon.

Red Tornado held a decisive experience advantage, but experience alone isn't enough to stop Rainbow Dash, who's defeated foes thousands of years old that had been fighting their whole lives. Rainbow Dash took the edge in several categories, including virtually all physical levels. Red Tornado did lift a large steel…chunk while at the bottom of the ocean, and he specifically stated that it was heavy, and implied it was near the limit of his ability to hold. Judging from the size and shape of the chunk, it should have weighed about 21 tons at the absolute most - and that's stretching it. Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash was able to lift a boulder weighing over 53 tons without much apparent trouble. And while his moving faster than the eye could see places him at speeds around Mach 12, and the to-the-moon-and-back thing at Mach 14, that's not a lot compared to what Rainbow Dash has done. Even discounting her little lightning-dodging feat, there's been quite a few incidences where she's surpassed Mach 15. Her mountain-racing feat alone puts her at Mach 24. And that's not counting the return trip. And the difference in durability is abundantly clear; Red Tornado could withstand the depths of the ocean with ease, which, at its absolute deepest, puts the pressure on at a little under 16,000 PSI. But just to form the mach cone needed to perform the Sonic Rainboom would have Rainbow Dash tearing through at 11.1 Gs. Given her weight and size, she would be experiencing pressure of around 19,000 PSI - over 3,000 more than Red Tornado. Her resistance to heat didn't hurt, either. While she could easily withstand heat of a bare minimum of 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, Red Tornado began melting at temperatures of 2200 degrees Fahrenheit. And taking the roar of that dragon to the face puts Red Tornado's missile-surviving feat to shame.

But her advantages don't stop there. Rainbow Dash's bold way of combat and tendency to get up in her opponent's face completely countered Red Tornado's keep-away fighting style, and she was certainly more well-equipped to damage him up-close. Red's close-quarters-combat is above-average at best, but is certainly no match for a Karate black belt, or even Rainbow's more…unique combat techniques. And while his powers were almost useless at close range, hers were hardly so. Red Tornado's forcefield may be powerful, but it's still made of wind - and that wind requires Red's full concentration to keep up. It wouldn't be long before Rainbow Dash ensured he was too distracted to keep up the field, or she could just destroy it herself with her control over air and wind. Not to mention that the field was originally designed to help against projectiles, and doesn't always do well against a full-blown physical assault. Also, Red's invisibility isn't…real invisibility. While it certainly makes it so normal people can't see him, Rainbow Dash isn't normal people. She's easily spotted and tracked the movements of other Wonderbolts and Cadets that can move at speeds of around 12,000 MPH - well above the 9,000 MPH that Red Tornado vibrates at to become invisible.

Red Tornado did hold one key advantage: his tornadoes were way more powerful, and he was actually able to keep control of them. However, it's not like tornadoes are the only tools at Rainbow's disposal. Her ability to create storms and manipulate the weather with ease gives her plenty of ways to continue the fight. Especially since those storm clouds she makes can shoot lightning. Red always seems to get pretty torn up by lightning. And Rainbow's tornadoes, while not as powerful as Red's, were certainly capable of holding their own - making an F6 tornado within five seconds, which, considering her rate of improvement, shouldn't be far from what she's able to do alone, is way faster than Red Tornado, who takes upwards of half a minute to reach those levels - and longer still to surpass that. Not to mention that when Red Tornado creates his most powerful tornadoes, capable of destroying incredibly durable space probes, he usually gets himself destroyed as a result. And even though Red can absorb naturally-occurring winds, he's shown himself to be unable to absorb winds and tornadoes created by other beings with similar powers to his. Rainbow Dash's explosion powers were an extra nail in the coffin. Not only does Red Tornado die to explosions all the time, but they also redirect his tornadoes, provide excellent surprise attacks and finishing moves, and produce incredibly hot flames - even to the point of melting steel, which, again, Red Tornado cannot withstand.

After all this, the only real question left is whether or not Rainbow could survive against the Air Elemental hosted within Red's body. And while there aren't many in Equestria who might, Rainbow Dash may be an exception. Her expert control over weather and powers granted by the Element of Loyalty ensures that she will at least survive the initial encounter. Because it's made of wind, she may even be able to destroy it or scatter it - though that isn't very likely. It's far more likely if she's able to turn the air molecules into explosions, but that's not even 100% necessary. She could always just race to the other side of the planet and wait the day out - it's not like there are any robot bodies waiting to be possessed in Equestria. The only reason we didn't do that in the battle is because, well, it would be a boring way to end the fight, and the way we did it also ties in the other battles again, which we want to do for some incredibly weird reason. And even though he's absurdly powerful in this form, he lacks any real control over himself - only really being able to move around, so the chances of him utilizing the form to kill Rainbow Dash are pretty thin.

Ultimately, Rainbow Dash held all the right advantages. Red Tornado's two or three spots where he took an advantage didn't pan out against a foe as resilient as Rainbow, and her boldness countered his attempts to stay away from his opponent quite well.

Red Tornado's dreams of winning this fight were simply Dashed away.

 **The winner is Rainbow Dash.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle…

A pink-colored puffball flies across the sky and smashes his sword into a nigh-omnipotent being, creating an explosion that breaks reality itself.

VS.

A humanoid in a blue outfit flies across the sky and smashes his fist into a nigh-omnipotent being, creating an explosion that breaks reality itself.

(Kirby vs. Superman)

…

 _It's time for another round of:_

 **Why That Matchup?**

 _In this mini-series that I'll do every few episodes, I answer the unspoken, and spoken, questions about why I chose to have a certain character fight certain characters over others. Confusing? Don't worry, you'll get it pretty quickly here:_

 **Kamek vs. Twilight Sparkle** :

 **Q** : Why did the Kamek fight Twilight instead of fighting…Joka?

 **A** : Joka, from Kloana, and Kamek have plenty of similarities, but Kamek is just…way, way more powerful. Joka has competed with creatures that are able to destroy towns, and Kamek has competed with creatures that are able to destroy planets. Yeah. Also, nobody has no idea who Joka is.

 **Q** : Why did Kamek fight Twilight instead of fighting…Black Mage?

 **A** : I've yet to play a Final Fantasy game outside of VII, and Black Mage has powers from over 50 games. No thanks.

 **Q** : Why did the Kamek fight Twilight instead of fighting…Metal Sonic?

 **A** : I guess, if you want another Mario vs. Sonic fight, these would make sense. Both are primary henchmen in blue that get underrated and overrated constantly. Also, Magic vs. Technology. But, aside from that, they have nothing in common, while Twilight and Kamek had almost everything in common in relation to powers.

 **Q** : Why did Twilight fight Kamek instead of fighting…Optimus Prime?

 **A** : This gets requested a lot exclusively because of Starscream vs. Rainbow Dash. But, aside from the fact that a character from My Little Pony fought a character from Transformers in a Death Battle way back when, they have absolutely nothing in common.

 **Q** : Why did Twilight fight Kamek instead of fighting…Spyro?

 **A** : They're purple, powerful, and both fly. That's it. Spyro stands no chance against the majority of Twilight's powers.

 **Q** : Why did Twilight fight Kamek instead of fighting…Harry Potter?

 **A** : All these answers seem to be "they have very little in common, the fight I did was better." It's true, though. Harry Potter and Twilight both do magic, and that's it.

 **Q** : Why Kamek vs. Twilight Sparkle at all?

 **A** : In addition to having been great magicians with many similar spells, the two shared several aspects of similarity. For example, both are, or, well, were, the most powerful of their kind (Magikoopa and Unicorn), one of the few of their kind to be able to fly, and one was the student of the most powerful royal force on the planet, while the other was the master of the most powerful royal force on the planet. Also…like, all of their spells were the same. Not every single one of them, obviously, but the majority were virtually identical. There are a couple of other things, but they aren't as prominent.

 **There you go! I hope this answered some subconscious (or conscious) questions! I'm looking forward to the next battle very much; I've had it on the mind for over a year and have been researching it for several months. Yes, it's true that DeadAliveManiac's Death Battle fanfiction did a Kirby vs. Superman battle for their 25th battle, but that wasn't exactly the most well-made thing in the world, and came under fire quite a bit for being inaccurate - like how they said Superman grew weaker at night. No offense to those guys, their modern stuff is amazing and way better than mine, but I say it's about time justice was done to a potentially absurdly epic fight. I've been a fan of both these characters for forever, so doing this battle is kinda a big deal to me. It will easily be the biggest Death Battle in the story thus far, and probably the biggest I'll ever write. So, yeah, look forward to that. See you later! Wish me un-biased decisions and research!**


	9. Kirby vs Superman

**HOLY CRAP, GUYS. I honestly can't believe this is finally done. Hundreds of hours of research were poured into this thing, creating my longest chapter of Death Battle yet, even outmatching Light Yagami vs. Lelouch Vi Brittania at over 20,000 words long, complete with a battle spanning over 5,000 words. So much work. So much time. An finally, I have an answer to my greatest "Who would win?" question in history.**

 **Are you ready?**

…

 _Episode 8: Kirby (Nintendo) vs. Superman (DC Comics)_

Champions of worlds. Aliens without a home. These two fighters have prevailed over virtually everything that has stood in their way. They've conquered demons, angels, galaxy-to-universe-level challengers, and even those considered omnipotent. Death Battle combatants are renowned for their power, but these invincible warriors that wield the powers of stars are at the top. Kirby, the last of the Star Warriors, and Superman, the Man of Tomorrow.

These two combatants are rather…strange when it comes to what is considered canon and what is not. Everyone seems to have their own definition of this detail. Because of this, let me put this up front: when it comes to Superman we'll be using all feats, abilities, and such of _every version_ of the _original Post-Crisis_ character. To put that into more specific terms, All-Star Superman and Injustice Superman are considered alternate timelines of the regular Post-Crisis Superman, so their abilities _will_ be counted, but characters like Ultraman, Bizzaro, and Superman Prime/Superman Prime One Million _will_ _not_ be counted. For fairness's sake, we'll do the same with Kirby. This means that while we'll be counting the anime and manga versions (most people count those as canon anyway), we won't be counting, say, the reality-warping private detective Kirby that fell in love with human women or Galacta Knight, a fully-grown version of Kirby that destroyed a universe. Original canon takes precedence in all matters of stories, powers, and weaknesses. Oh, and the DC universe has been retconned four times, with only a couple characters, like the original (Ulthoon) Red Tornado, staying the same throughout, so we'll be using the modern Superman, also known as Superman Rebirth, a canonical hybrid of Post-Crisis and New 52 Superman. Also, Kirby: Star Allies just came out as I'm writing this, but I've already poured hundreds of hours into research for this battle (and I don't even own a Switch), so nothing from that game will be counted in Kirby's analysis. I hope this clarifies things.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who might - no, would, win a Death Battle.

 **Kirby:**

Many thousands of years ago, a demon named Nightmare saw an opportunity to take over the universe. As an ethereal representation of fear, he was kind of invincible except to one thing: the Star Rod, a rod that turns Star Power (the magical piece of the fabric of reality that creates goodness, hope, and energy) into a weapon. Only such a concentrated dose of goodness could counter the essence of all fear, so, while the elder gods rested from their capture of Galacta Knight, he stole the Star Rod, and with it, all chances of him being stopped. He then waged war on the universe, using his magical powers to create powerful monsters and sent these monsters out to squelch rebellion and shroud the universe in darkness. However, unexpectedly, millions of fighters from across the universe rose up and went to war against him. They were called the Galaxy Soldiers, and the greatest of them were the Star Warriors. These were exceptionally powerful fighters granted the ability to use Star Power as a form of magic. Each of them equaled and defeated many monsters, and were the driving force of the war. Nightmare became overwhelmed. He could not make monsters powerful enough to permanently stop all the Star Warriors nor fast enough to counter their attacks. Over the course of a few thousand years, with entire galaxies obliterated in the process, the Galaxy Soldier War was eventually won. Nightmare had run out of power - the soldiers had outlasted him. Barely so; of the millions, only six Galaxy Soldiers and a single Star Warrior had survived. Angered, Nightmare decided he would create one more monster. One that would be more powerful than anything it could ever be faced against.

So, alongside a few followers and surviving monsters, he created Nightmare Enterprises, a deep-space company that people would order monsters from for various reasons. Nightmare would create the monsters and send them to the client in exchange for…well, money. However before this, he'd spent all his years toiling away on the greatest creation ever seen. He crafted the being from the very magic that had been used to defeat him, Star Power, and designed it completely around one thing: the ability to adapt. The essence of the creature made it seemingly undefeatable when fully formed and experienced. He then released it in a pod that would feed it knowledge and brainwashing for it to mature over the next few hundred years. The first thing it learned was its name: Kirby.

Buuuut, then the ship sensed a monster Nightmare had sent to King Dedede, ruler of Planet Popstar, thought Nightmare was reawakening the army, and crash-landed him on the planet two hundred years before he was supposed to wake up. So now we have the most powerful creature in the universe made entirely of goodness and not having been brainwashed, so basically Nightmare totally screwed himself over. And, realizing that, Nightmare was able to convince Dedede to hate Kirby and buy things to kill him so that Nightmare could send a bunch of monsters to do away with Kirby. Unfortunately, the only thing Kirby's battles with over a hundred monsters did was give him experience and allow him to hone his abilities, essentially guaranteeing Nightmare wasn't going to live past the next decade. But enough about Nightmare (oh yeah, Kirby totally killed that guy three times), let's talk about Kirby!

Kirby is an innocent and naïve soul who is, essentially, a baby. A baby with a deep-instilled sense of good who sought to make friends with everyone, and, if that didn't work, kill them. Because then they're probably monsters. Being a great force for good, Kirby was taken under the wing of Meta Knight and trained by five different masters to achieve his true potential. He's learned the basics of over seventeen martial arts, but only uses a few in combat - when he needs to, because he'd rather eat his opponent. Yes, you heard me. Kirby is most well-known for inhaling and devouring all that gets in his way. We'll go into detail there in a moment; for now, let's talk about some other abilities. Like the ability to shapeshift! After eating a magical tomato, Kirby gained the ability to transform into a variety of things and even some minor regeneration. Now, let me clarify something: many believe the transformations to only apply to Kirby's Yarn Form, which was achieved after being sent to an alternate universe made of yarn, but it's been confirmed several times that Kirby is fully able to transform even in his normal form, including in other games, a bonus episode of the anime, and by Nintendo Power itself, the magazine devoted to all things Nintendo (may it rest in peace). These transformations include becoming a parachute, a submarine, a tank, a UFO, and a dolphin. He can turn himself into a refrigerator, complete with exploding food, an invincible, though unmoving, Gordo, and can even pull off his own face and use it as a weapon. As a Rocket, he can fly and shoot out bursts of star-based energy at all times, as a Train, he can literally think tracks into existence, and then there's his favorite transformation: The Tankbot. This powerful robot is slow, but essentially indestructible. It fires rockets and has spring-loaded boxing gloves that can also detach and fly around. Is it effective? Maybe not as much as normal Kirby, but he loves it, so why not?

Kirby also is light as a feather, and so can float and fly around at will. While he is noticeably slower when flying, he can still reach the upper atmosphere within ten seconds. Being an honorary Star Warrior, he has the Star Warrior sense, which lets him know when he's being attacked and where it's coming from at all times in addition to providing him natural insight as to when his opponents are vulnerable or when he should get the heck away. Oh, and it gives him a natural ability to pilot any vehicle in the universe. Think of it as an improved Spider Sense. It even works while he's asleep or knocked out - though it is able to be outmatched by other Star Power-based fighters, like King Dedede and Meta Knight. The Guard technique somehow reduces all damage he takes by half, he can resist curses to some extent, and is a gifted chef and engineer. Also, he may or may not have the ability to clone himself. It's never been stated, but multiple copies of him have popped out of his body more than once before and we still have no idea where Blue Kirby came from, so it's a definite possibility. We'll just ignore it for now. And, in addition to all this, since he's literally made up of Star Power, Kirby's power level is, theoretically, infinite. Kirby has never officially lost a fight no matter how he struggles (except a few fights to King Dedede he purposefully threw), though this does mean his power level fluctuates pretty often. Sometimes he'll struggle the same against a monster who can destroy a planet as he will against an omnipotent deity who can destroy a universe, but, in the end, he's always won. Also, as an added bonus, Kirby has an infinite supply of Star Power, which means that none of these abilities ever runs out of uses. Now, shall we talk about Kirby's most famous ability?

Kirby can inhale with a powerful vacuum strong enough to suck up anything from a plate of food to an acre of forest to entire armies of monsters and move mountain-sized creatures (including the likes of Blocky and a mountain-sized stone statue of King Dedede). He can even suck up metaphysical material, such as light, sound, and…ghosts. Kirby, will then will "eat" any foes this vacuum sucks into his mouth, with it magically stretching in order to be large enough to consume whatever he's sucked up. When he swallows a foe, they enter an endless dimension of reality created by Nightmare and are stripped of their physical bodies, with their souls being trapped into becoming a "copy essence"; a representation of their powers. Kirby can do four things at this moment: he can spit them out, restoring their bodies, minds, and powers completely, he can use their souls to form powerful bursts of star-shaped energy he can spit at his opponents, he can recreate the body of the individual but rewire their mind into serving him, or, what he most often does, absorb that copy essence for himself, granting similar, if not greater, powers to his own being. This is called a "Copy Ability," and Kirby can store many of them inside himself and access them at any time. Having defeated an absurd amount of powerful monsters, he has plenty to pick from. Because some abilities are straight-up better than others, and because this analysis is already going to be longer than any of my other ones thus far, we'll only list about twenty-five of them, but he has plenty more in his utility belt.

With the Fire ability Kirby can spew fire, control fire, surround himself with fire, and even turn into an indestructible flaming ball of death. The temperature of this fire varies, but it has easily melted through steel before, and was once stated to be hotter than the sun, though he has yet to back this up. Oh, and he's completely immune to all fire and manners of heat. When spewing flames, he can put the pressure on so much that even a flame-resistant octopus demon the size of a castle was pushed into the atmosphere in seconds. On the flipside, there's the Ice ability, which lets Kirby spew frost breath that can freeze a steel-melting furnace solid in less than two seconds _while it's still on_. When he puts the breath on long enough, as in over five seconds, it literally transforms whatever it has touched into ice. Besides that, he can coat himself in a giant block of unbreakable ice and even freeze things inside his stomach dimension and spit them out as projectiles. But Fire and Ice aren't the only elements at Kirby's disposal. With the Water ability Kirby can create huge waves for him to surf on, spit water with a high enough PSI to blow up steel (yes, seriously, it explodes) and create deadly…rainbows. No joke; the rainbows that are made by his water actually have physical presence and pretty much kill whatever they touch. The Spark ability has Kirby creating and manipulating all forms of electricity and plasma, whether it be tossing around lightning bolts or creating a protective plasma forcefield around him. With the Tornado ability, Kirby can create and toss around miniature tornadoes or spin around and create one that's capable of parting an ocean the size of a planet. Like Moses, but on steroids. And, finally, the Stone ability transforms Kirby into an invincible statue so heavy, even black holes have a hard time moving him.

Finally for the element-based ones, anyway! 'Cause Kirby's got a slew more. The Needle ability lets him create and throw incredibly sharp needles that can grow to the size of a tree. He can also curl up in a spiky little ball and zoom around the place, like a way more destructive Sonic. With Bomb, he can make bombs that range from "oh, here's a tiny little explosion that can still destroy a building-sized monster that shrugs off cannonballs" to "AHAHA WATCH THE CITY-SIZED EXPLOSION INCINERATE EVERYTHING." With Wing, he gets…wings, with which he can fly around effortlessly at speeds comparable to Meta Knight, who can fly between planets in seconds, shoot regrowing laser feathers, and perform a devastating dive-bomb attack that greatly injured Crowmon, who shook off Dyna Blade's wind attack effortlessly, which destroyed buildings and leveled forests _hundreds of miles away._ He possesses foes with the Ghost ability, gets infinite deadly boomerangs, sharp enough to easily slice a gold/titanium car in half, with Cutter, and the Leaf ability lets him…shoot leaves. Well, that and create giant plant stalks that can break barriers set up by gods and hide inside an intangible pile of leaves.

We're only halfway through. See, the reason all these projectiles, whether they be arrows, spikes, or leaves, are so strong is because they're made entirely of Star Power, much like Kirby himself - a benefit of having an infinite supply of the stuff. So Kirby throwing leaves at enemies is actually Kirby throwing leaves that are created by one of the most powerful forces in the universe at enemies, hence why they can harm even deities. And the same goes for his weapon-based abilities, making these weapons way stronger than they look. The Whip ability gives Kirby a whip that phases through solid objects (if he wishes), can grab his foes, and even be lashed fast enough get Kirby hovering in the air. With Hammer, he gains a large hammer that can harness electricity, light itself on fire, and charge up more powerful strikes. It's matched the Dedede Hammer blow for blow, and we all remember how overpowered that thing is, right? Yo-Yo is even more deadly - think if the hammer was on the end of the whip. Parasol gives him a parasol that can block even the deadliest of blows, slows his descent, and will literally drill into his enemies by spinning. Beam Kirby has a wand that shoots out all kinds of beams. Laser beams, suction beams, beams that manipulate gravity, beams that slow down time, beams that grapple, and beams that destroy everything in their path. But his favorite ability of these has to be Sword. Kirby's sword can harness electricity, create energy fields, and even launch sword beams, which are massive beams of energy that create miniature Grand Canyons and one-shot anything without mercy - except light-based attacks and other sword beams. However, even without these bonuses, Kirby's a master swordsman, beating Meta Knight's swordsmanship virtually every time (and that guy has literally fought millions of monsters with a sword for thousands of years) and besting Nightmare's own pick for the best swordsman in the galaxy less than a day after first picking up a blade.

As if that weren't enough, with the Ninja ability, Kirby already has a sword, but can also teleport, turn invisible, create smoke, use dark magic, climb walls and ceilings, and throw infinite amounts of throwing stars. Doctor Kirby throws surprisingly powerful pills and creates several kinds of Potions. Fire Potions, Freezing Potions, Exploding Potions, Plasma Potions, Sleeping Potions, and Healing Potions are all readily available. Mirror Kirby can shoot energy beams, has an energy sword, can create a force field that reflects and rebounds all attacks, and can make "reflections" of himself, which act the same as the real Kirby and can recombine with him to increase his power. And Fighter Kirby can harness and manipulate chi to increase his speed and durability as well as perform a variety of devastating attacks, like the Smash Punch, which creates a ball of chi that breaks off the tops of mountains, the Down Kick, which causes foes to explode, and the Rising Break, which brings his foes up into the air with him while they're continually hit by a stream of chi. Most foes, even Masher, Nightmare's most powerful monster, don't stand a chance against that last one. But the most powerful are yet to come. The Hypernova ability increases Kirby's inhale ability to insane levels, literally letting him inhale with the force of a black hole. The Microphone ability can only be used three times before burning out, but turns Kirby's normal noises into soundwaves that destroy everything in their path. The first time this was used, Kirby only sang for a few seconds, and it killed several of Nightmare's most powerful monsters. A recording of the event nearly did the same to an entire stadium of people! Finally, there's the Crash ability, a one-use ability that, at full strength, creates an explosion as powerful as a Supernova, which explodes with a force of 10^44 Joules of energy, or about 24 OCTILLION MEGATONS. That's 27 zeros, in case you were wondering.

But that's not all. Kirby has grown so accustomed to these abilities that he's learned to _combine them_ to form even better ones. There are a ton of these, but let's just talk about a couple. Fire and Sword make a burning sword that never goes out, Spark and Bomb turn him into an exploding light bulb that electrocutes whatever it touches, Needle and Stone gives him infinite giant drills he can throw around, and, best of all, Cutter and Spark gives Kirby a Darth Maul-style double-bladed lightsaber. Effective? Not especially, but, like the Tankbot, it's so awesome that effectiveness is probably the last thing on Kirby's mind. But none of this even touches the Super Abilities, incredibly powerful versions of normal abilities based on a time limit, like Monster Flame, where Kirby summons giant fire dragons to turn his foes to dust, Grand Hammer, where Kirby's hammer gets a massive upgrade in size and power, and, of course, the Ultra Sword. A giant blade that can grow to any length, the Ultra Sword just destroy, destroys, and destroys some more. According to Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby, the Ultra Sword is a power of pure destruction and is literally "capable of slicing through anything."

However, the copy abilities do have a big problem. They…don't last. After taking a powerful blow, Kirby will lose his current ability and must absorb it again to regain it. And while he can switch from one ability to another, he cannot switch back to any previous abilities without absorbing another Copy Essence. Plus, while the weapons, items, and projectiles are tough, they aren't invincible - for example, the legendary monster Kirisakin, after dueling with Sword Kirby for some time, was able to snap Kirby's sword in half (though Kirby one-shotted him shortly after). Plus, all of it is magically made, so beings with resistance to magic have a natural bonus in defending against them. Not a guaranteed defense (they have damaged nigh-omnipotent magicians with plenty of wards, after all), but it's certainly something to be considered. Also, Magolor, a being of infinite power, was able to casually rid Kirby of his abilities without touching him by…well, rewriting reality. But if that's what it takes the completely stop these abilities, you can't complain about them all that much.

But even if you could, Kirby's best weapons and items aren't found through copy abilities. There are plenty of power-ups and weapons he's used over the years, like the Cracker, a lightweight portable cannon that shoots explosive rounds, the Plasma Bar, which shoots out a plasma beam wherever it's aimed, Balloon Bombs, which blow up buildings, Dynamite, which blows up everything, and the Stomper Boot, a supposedly impenetrable shoe that Kirby can ride around in and crush everything in his way with. An Invincibility Candy makes him temporarily invincible, Mint Leaves double his flight speed, and the Dash Shoe straight-out triples his general speed and agility. An invisibility stone makes him temporarily invisible, the Maxim Tomato completely heals his wounds, and the Prism Shield blocks and incinerates projectiles. Far more powerful than any of that, however, is the Star Rod. Kirby has wielded many legendary weapons before, including one that weaponized love, one that weaponized color, and one that weaponized goodness, but they all bow before the Star Rod, a rod that…shoots stars. Stars that destroy everything in their way and a quarter of the moon - on accident! Kirby can even charge up a blast that one-shotted Nightmare. It's this weapon Kirby used to defeat him three times over. But, believe it or not, it's still not Kirby's most powerful item. That would be the Warp Star.

The Warp Star is…actually what Nightmare turned the original Star Rod into, and was made to be the perfect companion to Kirby. Though Kirby transformed the original Warp Star back into the Star Rod, he's since created many copies of it using his own Star Power. The Warp Star is a star-shaped vehicle Kirby rides on that can grow, shrink, break, reform, and move about on Kirby's will. It's able to render his thoughts so clearly, it sometimes appears sentient. It shoots out concussive blasts of star-shaped energy, and can move insanely fast. I mean, it's crossed entire galaxies in under a minute and went from the edge of the universe to a post-apocalyptic earth (not a theory, it's been stated by Sukarai and confirmed in manuals) and back in a very short period of time - all the while with Kirby riding it and dodging everything in its way. And it comes to Kirby whenever he calls it (literally, he has a cell phone). Whether it's a few feet away, on the other side of the universe, or in an alternate dimension, it always finds its way back to Kirby within a few seconds. When fighting Dark Mind in the Mirror World, Kirby took chase using the Warp Star, and the two flew across entire dimensions in moments while battling. But to be able to fight at those speeds, Kirby would have to be physically ridiculous - which he is.

Kirby's strong enough to shatter the earth-sized planet Popstar with a single punch, fast enough to easily dodge energy beams moving at the speed of light, and tough enough to fight an entire battle with an uber-powerful being inside a black hole without breaking a sweat. Kirby has easily outran King Dedede in races, and Dedede's outpaced Kracko, who moves as fast as lightning - the reverse stroke of which moves at 1/3 the speed of light. He's dodged and blocked lasers, lightning bolts, and energy beams moving at light speed, like, every day, and has easily dodged blows from beings of infinite power - like the aforementioned Magolor. Speaking of which, when Kirby's Ultra Sword clashed with Magolor's impenetrable energy shield, Kirby's strength proved to be greater than his, which should be impossible, but just…wasn't for Kirby. Kirby's toughed out black holes, being thrown into the sun, and an explosion the size of a planet, and each time just bounced back without harm! Heck, the only black holes that have definitely harmed him are ones created by dark magic. The reason for his apparent indestructibility is that he's so malleable. He was crushed several times over by Blocky, who has a lower weight estimation of 500,000 tons (and a higher one of over 5 million tons) until he was thinner than a piece of paper, and was more surprised than anything else, popping back to normal after only a couple seconds. He took a blast from the Halberd's energy cannon straight to the face and wasn't even fazed. Why is this impressive? Well, the cannon previously one-shotted a Destroya (basically a giant ship of evil), incinerating it instantly. The only other attack that did this to a Destroya (even their own beams couldn't really hurt them) was a full-powered blast from Crash Kirby - which, as, we've stated, has the force of a Supernova. So it's not unreasonable to say the Halberd's cannon has the same force (plus it's literally said to take the energy of an exploding star, and has one-shotted absolutely everything except Kirby, so…). Even more impressive is when Kirby was caught in a continuous beam from the cannon, where he was being hit with that much force for nearly three full seconds, which is a lot more impressive than it sounds, considering the Destroya-destroying blast only hit the ship for 0.16 seconds. He's even taken hits from super weapons designed to erase him from the physical plane!

He threw Popon, a giant monster who weighed at least 3.5 tons, to the sun and back in only twenty seconds. Now, normally, this feat would be totally calculable, but Popstar's sun…isn't normal. He's a tiny thing only somewhat bigger than the 8-inch Kirby who lives on Dreamland normally, and is definitely not what we see here, or what is clearly providing heat to the star's residents in other episodes. ScrewAttack decided to just calculate the force to took to get the monster to pass escape velocity, but let's take this a couple steps further. After looking at every configuration of Popstar's solar system that we know of, the only choice close enough to Popstar to provide heat but hot enough to act as their sun would be the planet Hotbeat, which is significantly bigger than Popstar and, from the outside, looks like a giant ball of fire - exactly what we see at this moment in the anime. So we use an estimation based around these planet's distances from each other compared to the average distance between planets around our own solar system and four others we know about, and comparing that to the distance between the planets in this game shows us that, by approximation, 168,900,000 miles would be the distance from Popstar from Hotbeat, which isn't too bad of an estimate. According to scientists' estimates, a planet could reach out 155,243,200 miles from the sun and easily be habitable, assuming it had a proper, earth-like atmosphere. This is slightly farther than that, but, if you'll notice, Popstar has several different regions that all seem to have the same weather constantly, including ones where it's always snowing, ones where it's always a desert, and even ones where it's always noon. This could easily be an effect of the planet's position from Hotbeat. Plus, the residents of Popstar aren't exactly human, and have easily handled far worse conditions than a normal human would before. This means that Kirby threw over 3.5 tons at about 60,804,000,000 MPH.

So, what's more impressive than that? Well, one time, a moon-sized meteor made of molten lava and rock was speeding towards Popstar, and everyone thought they were going to die. One of Popstar's residents, Tiff, thought of a way to move the meteor out of the way by using Castle Dedede's cannons. If they all fired and hit the meteor at several precise angles, it could, theoretically, reverse the meteor's momentum and send it away from Popstar. Key word: theoretically. They tried this, but apparently everyone forgot that a moon-sized celestial body has its own gravity field. Needless to say, the cannonballs got caught up in that gravity field and did absolutely nothing. So, what did Kirby do? He jumped up, sucked up those cannonballs, and spat them all out in one heap at the meteor. The resulting impact forced the meteor to stop and completely change direction, heading the opposite way _over four thousand times faster than it was originally going_. And remember that Tiff's plan was to spread out the cannonballs in order to strike certain weak points of the meteor, while Kirby just spat them all at once at a random place. And, since Star Power is equal everywhere in his body, it's totally feasible that he could have done the same thing by just punching the thing. And if you're still not impressed, later on Kirby just picked up a monster and straight-up _threw him out of the galaxy_.

With all that power, you'd think Kirby would never lose, ever. And…you'd be right. Kirby's been matched up against foes that theoretically should have made mincemeat out of him, but then he just wrecks them completely. This guy has defeated the incarnation of all evil twice, the personification of fear three times, and even his universe's version of Satan. He one-shotted Kirisakin, King Dedede, an alternate him from the Mirror World, and even Wolfwrath, a monster who could defeat an entire army of Star Warriors like Meta Knight. Oh, and he beats Meta Knight and King Dedede, like, every other day, and defeated Meta Knight's way more powerful counterpart, Dark Meta Knight, with ease. But he's not just strong; he's surprisingly skilled. Nightmare created five martial art-based monsters that were supposed to be the best there ever was at each's specific martial art. They were masters of Kung Fu, Boxing, Karate, Tai-Chi, and Sumo. And Kirby beat every one of them using only moves from their specific martial art - in a row! But these certainly weren't Kirby's most powerful foes. After the villain Marx wished on the magical wish-granting ship Nova to be strong enough to take over Popstar (and therefore be strong enough to kill Kirby), Kirby still beat him. And then Marx combined souls with Nova, giving him that kind of infinite power, and Kirby _still_ won! After defeating Magolor, who was given infinite power by the Master Crown, the Crown was reborn as Magolor Soul, a physical manifestation of omnipotence. And again, Kirby won. The result of the battle ended up annihilating the entire dimension, but Kirby was still fine. And remember Galacta Knight, the guy all the gods spent their powers on containing, allowing Nightmare to steal the Star Rod and turn it into the Warp Star? Well, turns out he's Kirby from an alternate universe where Nightmare successfully made him evil, only for him to destroy his universe, and head into this one. After he was released from containment, Kirby defeated him. Three times. He defeated an entire alien invading force by himself when one of their simplest attacks could one-shot both King Dedede and Meta Knight, and has defeated a ton of powerful sorcerers, even while under their spells! This includes Yin-Yarn, who turned Kirby into yarn, Drawcia, who turned Kirby into a living bouncy ball, and Necrodius, who turned Kirby into ten copies of him without any powers. Kirby is clearly one of the most powerful beings…just ever.

But powerful doesn't mean perfect, and even though Kirby's never officially lost a fight he didn't purposefully throw (like he has to King Dedede), he's come pretty close. He's overly emotional, incredibly naïve, and will pretty much trust anything anyone says without question. Also, he's always hungry; he can literally eat a castle stuffed with food and still want more. Plus there's how light he is; even if it doesn't hurt him, a powerful blow would certainly send Kirby flying. But likely his greatest weakness is his stamina. See, just because Kirby has an unlimited supply of Star Power doesn't mean he has unlimited access to it. Don't get me wrong; normally, someone using Star Power runs out very quickly when transforming or attacking with it, but Kirby can do that kind of thing all day. However, doing way more complex things, like creating a new Warp Star, takes a chunk of his available supply, and taking powerful blows drains it quickly. His durability only seems to last as long as his Star Power does. Remember that whole taking the Halberd Cannon for three seconds thing? He did that when he was younger, and could do it twice before his Star Power was about gone. After running out, he will fall asleep in order to recover it. This has been exploited by foes in the past in order to try to beat Kirby; like the time Knuckle Joe, the self-proclaimed greatest monster hunter in the universe, became the official Monster Manager for Nightmare Enterprises. His solution to defeating Kirby was to tire him out by having him defeat hundreds of small monsters before sending their biggest one, Masher, at him. Kirby survived, but he pretty nearly didn't. That being said, it is worth mentioning that while it normally takes a Star Warrior hours to recover spent Star Power, Kirby will recover his within seconds.

But for as much as he eats, it's because of him Dreamland is there to grow food. For all that he foolishly trusts, it's due to his protection that everyone trusts they will live through the night. And for as quickly as his powers can drain, he manages to give it all and more before letting anyone else be hurt. When the worst forces of darkness come to snuff out the brightest star in the sky, Kirby will always be there, protecting it.

Kirby might just be the cutest and deadliest Nintendo hero of all time.

 _Kirby's Ultra Sword breaks through Magolor's energy shield and cuts its way right through Magolor himself. Time seems to stop. Wasting no opportunity, Kirby slices upwards again as the sword changes form. It changes again for a slash downward, and another time for another slash. Kirby raises it above his head in the sword's original form as it grows. When it grows to three times its original size, he makes one final slice down. The sword shrinks, and Kirby waves it in finesse before lowering it._

 _Time begins again, and the omnipotent Magolor screams in agony as he is torn to shreds, dissolving until there is nothing left._

 **Kirby:**

Name: Kirby of the Stars

Species: Puffball

Age: 30-50, maybe more

Height: 8 in. / 20 cm.

Weight: 6 oz. / 170 grams

Occupation: Star Warrior, Royal Chef, Technician

Built starships

Can mimic voices

Favorite Food: Tie between Watermelon and Tomatoes

 **Items/Weapons:**

Cracker

Mint Leaf

Invincibilty Candy

Invisibilty Stone

Plasma Bar

Balloon Bombs

Dynamite

Stomper Boot

Dash Shoe

Maxim Tomato

Prism Shield

Cell Phone

Love-Love Stick

Triple Star Cane

Rainbow Sword

Star Rod

Warp Star

 **Abilities:**

Inhale

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Healing Factor

Shapeshifting

Flight

Guard

Star Warrior Sense

 **Copy Abilities:**

Sword

Hammer

Yo-Yo

Beam

Parasol

Fire

Ice

Spark

Water

Tornado

Stone

Needle

Bomb

Wing

Doctor

Ghost

Cutter

Leaf

Whip

Ninja

Mirror

Fighter

Microphone

Smash

Hypernova

A LOT MORE, LIKE, THERE'S NO WAY I'M LISTING THEM ALL

 _\- Super Abilities:_

Ultra Sword

Snow Bowl

Grand Hammer

Monster Flame

Flare Beam

 _\- Mixed Abilities:_

Double-Bladed Laser Sword

The rest aren't important enough to be next to that piece of awesome

 **Feats:**

Defeats an entire army, like, every day

Defeated Queen Sectonia

Has defeated gods and goddesses

Bounced a meteor away with a few cannonballs

Survived several black holes

Escaped from the pull of a black hole

Was hit by a full blast of anti-matter and lived

Fought a battle inside a black hole

Defeated Galacta Knight, the alternate, adult version of himself, thrice

Destroyed both the sun and the moon with relative ease

Survived an energy blast that hit with the force of a supernova

Survived the destruction of a dimension

Tanked a planet-sized explosion

Destroyed infinite power, personified, twice

Destroyed fear, personified, three times

Defeated the Popstar version of Satan

Defeated the incarnation of evil twice

Created a Tornado that parted the entire ocean

Threw a monster out of the Galaxy

Sliced open a volcano with a giant fish

Destroyed the planet-sized Nova

One-Shotted Wolfwrath, who is said to be capable of wiping out a whole army of Star Warriors single-handedly

 **Weaknesses:**

Naive

Impulsive

Childish

Always hungry

Strong magical curses can affect him

Dimwitted

Emotional  
Extremely light

Will run out of Star Power eventually and be forced to sleep

…

 **Superman:**

Many years ago, the planet Krypton existed as a powerful force in the universe of technology. Science and Art were its two biggest draws, and life was peaceful beyond what most citizens in the galaxy had known -aside from an occasional tussle with a neighboring planet. But below the surface, trouble was brewing. Whether it be a result of gravitational destabilization, a degenerating planet core, massive underground earthquakes, or a poison from an alien warlord (seriously, this bit has differed an egregious amount in different canons), the outcome was always the same: total planetary destruction. There was only one man willing to do anything about it: Jor-El, a respected scientist on the high council. When he discovered the problems with the planet, he developed a solution to stabilizing the whole thing, the rest of the council rejected the plan, finding the notion of such a peaceful place being on the verge of destruction laughable. When he came back with an emergency evacuation plan, they straight-up destroyed all his work! You'd think that these guys would listen to the man who invented hovercars and discovered the Phantom Zone, but apparently not. Starting from scratch, Jor-El had just enough time to construct a few rockets capable of leaving the planet in a hurry, but they were too small for a full-grown man to fit in. So he decided to remain on the doomed world and give his son, Kal-El, the chance to escape. After a psychic meeting with Thomas Wayne (you know, Batman's dead dad), he determined the planet Earth as a suitable destination, and, moments before the planet was destroyed, he launched the space pod with his son inside.

And so his infant child left the planet with nothing but a single blanket and a crystal that would later grow into his own personal fortress. Little did the child (and, in many cases, the father) know that entering a system with a yellow star would give him incredible powers and a role to play in the universe greater than anyone could've imagined. But when he crash-landed on earth and was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent, it was pretty obvious that he was a special child. Even more special than a normal child who came from a dying planet that you found in a space pod, anyway, since he had all kind of superpowers. Considering that the family line was already full of government agents and secret superheroes, there wasn't much better of a family for Kal-El to happen to be adopted into. He was given the name Clark Kent, and raised as a normal human, but when he turned to heroism and began stopping lots of world-ending threats, it wasn't long before he first heard his new name: Superman.

And yet Clark didn't initially take to the whole "being an alien" thing very well. With the self-discovery of each of his powers being an accident (like discovering that he could fly by falling off a cliff), he was eventually told he was an alien by his adoptive parents. He rejected the fact completely and accidentally set up mental blocks and barriers that would stop him from reaching his full potential for much of his life. But after setting up the Fortress of Solitude, hearing about his tragic past, and discovering that his baby blanket made a pretty sweet cape, he took to his new life as a superhero with pride, stopping criminals and aliens alike with the same ideals and tone. He was a hero beyond other heroes; he was an ideal. He was the defender of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Before long he went on to form the Justice League and consistently do what his father couldn't: save his planet. But enough about Jor-El (oh, yeah, that guy totally survived the destruction of Krypton and became evil until his son beat him up), let's talk about Superman!

Being the boy scout he is, Superman is the ultimate idea of a superhero, as available to save a cat from a tree as he is to save the universe. Assisting with this is his super-mind. While his powers allow him to recognize things moving way faster than light as if they were in slow motion and lets his mind process the world around him thousands of times faster than a normal human's, he was naturally born a genius, and, even when he's not using his powers, is easily one of the smartest men on the planet. And while he's able to approach battles from a tactical approach…most of the time, the general way he used his brain to help him in fighting gods and demons is through the study of martial arts. He's studied boxing with Wildcat, pressure points with Batman, and all kinds of hand-to-hand combat techniques with Wonder Woman. These are all pretty impressive, since each figure is considered one of the best in those fields. True, Superman isn't as good at those arts as any of his teachers, but his boxing skills are enough to let him hold his own against Muhammed Ali even without powers, his pressure point manipulation allows him to disable even other kryptonians, and his CQC has let him knock out Deathstroke in combat. He's also studied the kryptonian martial arts Torquasm-Rao and Torquasm-Vo. Unfortunately, these two names are used interchangeably a lot, making it difficult to pinpoint what each one does, but Superman consistently uses them together, and together they give him hypersensitivity to his surroundings, the ability to stave off mental attacks and illusions, and the ability for his body to automatically respond to opponent's attacks without thinking about it. You know Ultra Instinct, that new thing Goku can do that everyone's excited about? Yeah, it's pretty much that. He's capable of using all of these martial arts in turn during combat, even against beings just as powerful as him. And powerful he is, as we've yet to mention his real superpowers. And he has a lot of them.

Before we start, all of Superman's powers come from his exposure to our sun, a yellow star. His kryptonian cells are capable of absorbing the radiation of sunlight without any defined limits, and he uses the stored radiation when using his abilities, though most of them he's so accustomed to using they barely take up any power at all. And, of course, if he's anywhere near a yellow or blue sun, his supply is constantly growing, and the closer he gets to the sun, the more solar energy he absorbs, and the more powerful he becomes - though it should be noted that direct exposure to red sunlight will drain Superman's solar energy over time. He's occasionally spent some time inside the sun in order to come out stupidly powerful - the general rule of thumb is about three times the power per fifteen minutes in the sun. Now, let's get into some superpowers.

True to his name, Superman can do everything a human can do and do it way better. His senses are absolutely ridiculous in level. His super smelling lets him detect the smell of cigar smoke decades after the cigar left the place, his super hearing lets him hear the sound of a signal watch in the vacuum of space _twenty-five light years away_ , and his super vision can casually check in on a top-security prison on the other side of the planet or even see the going-ons of a new colony on Mars just by looking up! He has precise muscle control, which allows him to always be exactly as powerful as he needs to be and not a bit more in order to reserve his supply of sunlight or not kill whoever he's fighting. But they've always have a harder time trying to kill him due to his bio-electric aura. It's this aura that protects him and his suit from things like planets exploding on top of him or being hit with a Supernova. The aura dulls the pain he feels and absorbs the damage for him. This is why being hit so much keeps draining his solar energy; it's put to work keeping up the field. However, magical weapons and attacks bypass the aura completely, though without it he's still durable enough to take hits that can destroy planets.

His X-Ray vision makes him able to see through any material except lead, and even allows him to see the souls of other people and see through invisibility. His microscopic vision is so accurate that he can see the molecules of any individual or object around him and is able to pick out specific humans around the world while relaxing on the moon. He also has super-ventriloquism, which allows his voice to be heard by specific individuals entire continents away. His static electricity has restorative properties, allowing him to repair clothes, buildings and TEARS IN THE FABRIC OF REALITY just by rubbing his hands together! Oh, yeah, and he also has super-healing. Whenever he takes a hit that actually injures him (which is very rare), the sunlight in his cells is directed at the damaged area, regenerating it almost right away. He can heal from being impaled within seconds, even by Wonder Woman's sword, which can cut atoms. He can add the kinetic energy of the area around him to his blows, breathe underwater and in space, and resist the pull of a black hole. His super breath can create enormous hurricanes and blow out a continental fire with ease, and his ice breath freezes everything in its way, including entire lakes and sometimes oceans. Prolonged exposure goes past just freezing his enemies solid and actually turns his foes into ice sculptures of themselves! He can manipulate magnetism, speak any language after only hearing it for a few seconds, and vibrate at speeds fast enough to phase through certain attacks and even turn invisible, though he needs a lot of time to process the vibrational frequencies he needs to be at in order for a blow to pass through him, and he can't land any of his own during this state.

Speaking of vibrational frequencies, there was this one time where it was revealed that every version of Darkseid (Superman's most powerful nemesis) was just a prop of the real omniversal Darkseid. This "true" Darkseid was well beyond anything any of the Justice League had faced and pretty much outclassed everyone (including Superman) by such a huge margin that they were compared to ants trying to defeat a god. However, Superman got his hands on a nigh-all-knowing Mother Box, which, in addition to his super senses, revealed the secret of the universes to him, which was that everything was really pretty much made of vibrations, or, more specifically, light waves and soundwaves. So Superman figured out True Darkseid's vibrational frequency and the counter-frequency and…a single shout was all it took to literally erase this omnipotent being from reality.

But Superman's most powerful superpower is said to be his Heat Vision. His heat vision is ridiculously strong; a simple blast is enough to match one of Darkseid's Omega Beams, which can destroy planets, and cancels out a gun that freezes things to absolute zero. He himself is capable of incinerating entire planets by casting his spread wide enough, or he can amp it up to the level of dissolving an entire army of Doomsday clones; and those guys were wrecking another army filled with planet-movers! But it doesn't have to be big and messy. On the contrary, his heat vision is fully capable of being used microscopically, and, when combined with his X-ray and microscopic vision, can do some crazy things. Like the time he removed Manchester Black's superpowers by cutting out abnormal cells in his body while the two were doing battle, or the time when, while casually glancing at a typewriter, he rewired the whole thing to type out everything backwards! Oh, and his heat vision can fix tears in space-time, because…it just can. At the end of it all is the Super Flare, a last-ditch heat vision-based attack where Superman ejects all of his solar energy into a massive heat-based explosion that lobotomizes EVERYTHING. However, this leaves him without any powers for 24 hours afterward, so it's definitely an all-or-nothing move.

That all being said, my pick for Superman's most powerful ability is his flight. Whether it's due to gravity manipulation, psychic abilities, or a power granted by an imp from the fifth dimension (again, what's the deal with all the different explanations?), he can fly across space effortlessly at ridiculously fast speeds. He's flown all the way from Vega to Earth in less than five minutes, kept up with someone who can circle the super-planet Apokolips thousands of times, and raced, alongside two other versions of him, all the way to the Andromeda galaxy, which is millions of light years away, in less than ten minutes. He's also flown over a hundred light years while dragging a continent-sized spaceship behind him. He can even utilize the Speed Force for a short amount of time - you know, that binding force that gives the Flash his powers? He's used it to utilize the cosmic treadmill, throw the infinite mass punch (which hits with the force of a white dwarf star), and race against the likes of Wally West's Flash, who brought 500,000 people 35 miles away from a nuclear explosion in 0.00001 microseconds. To be clear, Superman isn't _as fast_ as the Flash, but he can certainly catch up to him at times. Superman's flight speed is beyond incredible. He even wears an invisible Legion Flight Ring from the future, which lets him fly even if his powers are taken away (though at significantly reduced speeds). Perhaps best of all, since Superman's cells don't have a limit on how much radiation they absorb, Superman's powers are, theoretically, limitless. He's always as strong as he needs to be.

However, Superman's superpowers do have a big problem. They're completely reliant of the solar energy inside of his cells, and the majority begin to use more than is quickly replenishable. This means that the more Superman uses these powers, the more his energy is drained, and the weaker they become. While some take away virtually nothing (e.g. super senses), his frost breath, super breath, bio-electric aura, and healing factor definitely do. His heat vision, in particular, burns out his solar energy way faster than any other power, especially when amped up. That being said, the key word here is "begins." The difference in power is often so slight that Superman has to use these abilities an enormous amount or take an incredible beating in order to feel the effects, which is something that rarely happens, because…he's just so friggin' powerful!

Though he wasn't always. Superman's mental barriers haunted him for quite some time, as he was constantly feeling like he was on the cusp of a much greater power, but just couldn't reach it. However, after lengthy training from Mongul II, he was able to break down these barriers, reaching his full potential - which he promptly used to beat the crap out of his trainer. And Superman can make quite a mess of things when he feels like it.

Now, I'm about to go into Superman's many, many insane feats, but I'd like to show you a couple I'm throwing out the window first, and why. Some will quote Superman's lifting Specter, who's made of eternity, or lifting a book of infinite pages as proof that his strength is infinite (including ScrewAttack themselves), but both of these are easily explained away. Eternity is a measurement of _time_ , not space. A fair amount of DC characters have moved units of time before (because it's a strange and wonderful place with many strange and wonderful powers), including Superman, and this is the only time I could find where a unit of time was stated to be heavy. The fact that Superman and Wonder Woman could lift it is impressive, but, unfortunately, immeasurable. It could be as light as a piece of paper, or as heavy as a galaxy, but we don't know. And Superman and Captain Marvel never actually lifted that book. They tried to, certainly, but stated it was ridiculously heavy (if their strength was infinite, there'd be no weight factor at all, even from a book of infinity), and then it plopped itself onto the floor and turned to the page they needed. Yes, Ultraman, an evil version of Superman from another earth, did lift that book, and Superman's supposed to be stronger than Ultraman, but that's the thing - if lifting it means Ultraman's strength is infinite, then Superman's can't be above it. Plus, the book's containment field was still up (which was attached to the ship, so that makes no sense) and Ultraman claimed to have read its final chapters. The final chapters…of a book with infinite chapters. So, clearly, whoever wrote this panel wasn't exactly thinking straight, so I vote we ignore the whole mess and move on. Oh, and yes, Superman did break apart Soulfire Darkseid, who's multiversal in power, but Soulfire Darkseid healed immediately and has been broken apart when hit by stray meteors, plus Superman himself admitted during the same sequence, while watching Soulfire Darkseid fight the Source, "Those two are duking it out on a plane of power way out of my class." And Superman did absorb enough radiation to vaporize half a galaxy, but it was exactly that: absorbed. Superman absorbs solar radiation all the time, so he just used his powers to absorb that radiation, too. So for those reasons, these four feats that are popularly misunderstood are not to be counted.

Not that he needs them! He's strong enough to shatter entire planets with a single punch, fast enough to take an evil clone on a trip through the galaxy in less than a minute, and tough enough to take an explosion with the power of fifteen supernovas to the face! He's bench-pressed the weight of the earth for five days straight without access to sunlight, saved an antimatter baby in less than a nanosecond, and ended up being crushed between two giant planets crashing into each other - which then exploded! Now, these planets were way, way, way bigger than earth, so a lot of people have thought this feat was beyond anything else imaginable, but Superman had been altered through use of a boom tube in order be to be scaled to size. But still, that's like two earth-sized planets smashing into you and then exploding in your face. And he was fine! When he fought Doomsday - no, not the first time, no, not the second time…yes, that time, the most recent one. Anyway, at this point, Doomsday was stupidly powerful. His mere presence boiled entire oceans and he broke both of Wonder Woman's arms with a single punch (arms that could destroy small planets, mind you), and then powered up in order to face Superman. So, what did Supes do? He plunged his hands inside Doomsday and just ripped him in half, killing him instantly! Oh, what? That's not crazy enough for you? When he faced up against an alternate version of him (wow, that plotline is way overused), the collision of blows between the two created tears in reality with their raw power! Or what about the time he had a tiny black hole powerful enough to suck up the entire solar system inside a containment field? When the field began to break down, Superman just clenched his fist over the black hole and just…held it. I mean, why should we be surprised? The guy's taken the explosion of the Source Wall, a detonation fifty times bigger than a Supernova's, and, while on his way to Earth, decided to make the trip shorter and passed through a few black holes on the way _just because he could_.

Superman's destroyed an F5 tornado with a single clap, punched Wonder Woman from the Sun to the Earth (a distance of 93 million miles - with one punch), caught the Reverse Flash, took blows from the Void Hound (which, in a test run, destroyed ten star systems), and helped move the Megaddon, which dwarfs the earth-moon system, from the inside! He's so fast, he had an entire conversation with the Flash in the time it took a drop of coffee to hit their table. If that's not good enough for you, one time, Green Lantern reduced time to the space of a quarter of a nanosecond. The only superheroes who functioned in this timeframe were Green Lantern, because he did it, Deadman, because he's a ghost, and Superman, because…he's just that fast. He flew into and out of the center of a red sun (which, even if it didn't drain him of his powers, is like taking millions of nukes head-on) while fighting Superboy Prime. He defeated three hundred Green Lanterns _at once_ , pushed around another timeline's Krypton (which is bigger than Jupiter), and defeated both Samson and Atlas (who can each supposedly destroy entire planets) in arm wrestling _at the same time_. In the process, he broke both of their arms and destroyed the island they were resting on. Oh, and he casually damaged the Bizarro World, which rests inside the Underverse, a place that reduces normal planets to atoms.

He's single-handedly stopped an entire invading force from Apokolips several times, destroyed an entire army of parademons with a wave of heat vision, and was thrown into Earth with enough power to cause a nuclear holocaust, and casually shook it off. I mean, he's shaken off the explosions of planets he's on or next to several times, so why not, I guess. He's able to kill Green Arrow, Lex Luthor, the Joker, Black Canary, and even freaking Captain Marvel and Hercules, both beings supposed to be around his strength who are powered by magic, one of his main weaknesses. And, to top it all off, when Valhalla was invaded by demons, Superman, alongside Wonder Woman and Thor (no, not that Thor), went there to fight them off. Except there wasn't a sun there, so Superman…didn't have powers. He fought for almost a hundred straight years without them until Thor died and passed his mantle, weapon and powers on to Superman, who then went on to defeat all the demons over the course of A THOUSAND YEARS. And in that entire time, even when he was without powers, he still somehow managed to survive and win against the demons without killing a single one. Because…honestly, that's kind of what Superman's about. Even foes made up of pure evil still receive his mercy.

Unfortunately, that fact and some others are what ensures he hasn't had a perfect winning streak. For all his time fighting and winning against galaxy or universe-level or even omnipotent beings, he's still not the world's best fighter or tactician. Usually, when some martial artist is brought up to his physical level or he's brought down to theirs, he loses. When he was drained of his powers via a red sun and tasked with fighting Muhammed Ali, he put up a decent fight, but ultimately lost, despite his human self without powers still being physically superior to Ali. Similarly, when Alfred took a pill that made him as strong as Superman temporarily, they duked it out and Superman was completely wrecked. I've already mentioned that magic bypasses Superman's bio-electric aura, but he also has a huge weakness to radiation. See, his cells don't just absorb solar radiation rapidly, but all radiation, and most of it is pretty darn harmful. This is why a nuke will often hurt him more than a continent-sized explosion, or why kryptonite, radioactive pieces of Krypton's remains, is so deadly to him. And deadly is the right word; just being somewhat near Kryptonite will weaken him greatly, and prolonged exposure will, eventually, kill him. And keeping him out of the sun for too long and continually draining his supply of solar energy is pretty much the way everyone who's beaten him has done so, especially Doomsday, who wrecked him up so bad he was in a healing coma for the next several years. And, despite everything, he gets enraged…surprisingly easily, and will lose all form of tactics when angry.

But in the end, he's beaten the world's best martial artists in combat. He's lifted an entire island made of kryptonite and launched it into space. He rematched against Doomsday and obliterated him. And his anger has, on occasion, made him even more powerful. Any weaknesses he has, Superman has and will overcome. Any fighter he faces, he will rise to their level and beyond. And all the while, we can trust him to do the right thing. Because that's what makes him Superman.

Superman may just be the most powerful superhero in comic book history.

 _A man looks over the edge of the roof of the Daily Bugle, grimly determined. He readies to jump right before Superman flies up and appears in front of him._

" _Mr. Ackerdson?" Superman asks. "May I call you Henry?"_

" _Call me whatever you want," Henry replies. "It doesn't matter. Nothing does."_

" _I'm going to have to disagree with you, sir. Everything matters. Everybody matters." Superman begins flying toward him._

 _Henry whips out a gun and puts it to his temple. "Don't come any closer! I'll do it!"_

 _Superman halts. "I'm staying right here."_

" _You don't understand," Henry declares. "I've been a newspaperman for forty years. I started as a copyboy when I was sixteen. Always thought I'd be doing it 'til the day I died." He smirks. "Guess I got that part right."_

" _There are other jobs."_

" _Newspapers are dying," Henry continues. "I spent my life fighting for the little guy; fighting for truth and justice. It isn't relevant anymore."_

" _That's what some people say. But I've fought for the same things, even when they don't seem fashionable. It's a never-ending battle, but we can't quit."_

 _Henry bows his head sadly. "I'm not the man you think I am. I'm too weak to fight anymore."_

 _Superman looks at him with compassion. "You're stronger than you know, Mr. Ackerdson."_

 _There's a moment of silence, then Henry sighs, smiles, and lowers the gun._

 **Superman:**

Name: Clark Joseph Kent

Species: Kryptonian

Age: 1000+

Height:

Weight:

Occupation: Leader of Justice League, Reporter

Applied for the U.S. Military, but failed his entrance exam

Has met alternate versions of him at least 29 separate times

Best Friend: Tie between Batman and Wonder Woman

 **Abilities/Items:**

Superhuman Smell

Superhuman Sight

Superhuman Hearing

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Ventriloquism

Superhuman Mind

Superhuman Voice

Restorative Static Electricity

Precise Muscle Control

Minor Kinetic Energy Manipulation

Super Breath

Freeze Breath

X-Ray Vision

Microscopic & Macroscopic Vision

Heat Vision

Healing Factor

Bio-Electric Aura

Magnetism Manipulation

Omniversal Translation

Vibration

Flight

Legion Flight Ring

 _\- Martial Arts:_

Boxing

CQC

Pressure Points

Torquasm-Rao

Torquasm-Vo

 **Feats:**

Tanks planet explosions all the time

Took a blast worth 15 Supernovas to the face

Took a blast worth 50 Supernovas while weakened

One-shotted Doomsday

Defeated Deathstroke

Sang True Darkseid to death

Took collision of two super-planets, and explosion of them immediately following

Destroyed F5 Tornado with one clap

Punched Woman Woman 93 million miles away

Took blasts from the Void Hound

Incinerated army of parademons

Incinerated army of Doomsdays

Fought demons for 1000 years

Killed 300 Green Lanterns w/ Yellow Lantern ring

Defeated Samson and Atlas in an arm wrestle

Held a black hole

Moved the Megaddon

Reacts in a quarter of a nanosecond

Killed Lex Luthor, Hercules, Captain Marvel & more

One-shotted Darkseid

Rammed through the core of a red star

Lost his powers for a year on a barren earth, still killed monsters and made a life for himself

Defeated many Kryptonians in combat

Lifted Specter

Saved the universe dozens of times

Did so much other crazy stuff that this list could go on for several pages

 **Weaknesses:**

Angers easily

Isn't the best martial artist ever

Completely reliant on solar energy

Magic ignores bio-electric aura

Harmful Radiation

Kryptonite

Isn't infinitely powerful

Has lost fights before

One-shotted by He-Man

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all! It's time for a Death Battle!

…

Superman wiped a drop of sweat off his brow as he sealed another breach in reality with his heat vision. "These things are starting to get kind of annoying," he complained to Batman.

A voice came into his ear. "Get a suntan when you're done. They have to be sealed."

"Have you heard back from Red Tornado yet?"

"No, but the dimensional tears are slowly stabilizing. Looks like he did his job. There should only be a couple more after this."

"Well, let's hope they're in the neighborhood. I'm getting awfully tired of flying to other galaxies tod-"

Before he'd even finished speaking, a new breach suddenly opened up next to him and out popped a circular pink creature with two wings in full white armor.

"Yes!" the newcomer exclaimed. "At last, I am free once more! All your worlds shall bow to the might of Galacta Knight!" He paused, then looked at Superman. "Huh. You don't look like anyone I've encountered before. What universe is this, exactly?"

Superman crossed his arms, reading the creature's soul. Strangely, it seemed to have a soul of goodness, but had somehow twisted it for evil purposes. "Not one willing to let someone like you try to take it."

Galacta Knight huffed. "Well, that nice slice of reality over there seems to lead into my intended universe. I guess I'll destroy that one, and then come back for this one!" He glanced at a nearby planet. "Hmm. How many people do you think live there?"

"What?" Superman was taken by surprise. "Er, eight or nine billion, I sup-"

Galacta Knight sliced the air in front of him, sending a sword beam at the planet which carved it in half instantly. "Consider that a taste of your future. Goodbye!" and before Superman had even gotten over what had just happened, he was gone - flown into another breach.

Superman turned towards the breach, his breath drawn out in anger. Batman's voice appeared in his ear. "Superman, come in. What just happened?"

"Exactly what you think just happened," Superman replied shortly. "I'm going after him."

"He's of no concern to us. We have to focus on closing these breaches so he can't return."

"He's of concern to that universe, and that universe is of concern to me. I'll stop him before he can take any more lives." And with that, Superman zoomed towards the rapidly-closing breach, ignoring Batman's warnings, and went from his universe to a brand-new one.

Meanwhile, on Popstar, Kirby was happily chowing down on a delicious watermelon outside of Castle Dedede. He was somewhat reflecting on the fight King Dedede and Bowser had the day before - if one-millionth of your brain thinking about it counted as "somewhat," when out of the sky, an old foe appeared.

"Hello, my younger self," Galacta Knight declared mockingly. "Care to tangle with fate agai-WHAT? NO! STOP!"

A few seconds later, Kirby was rubbing a very full stomach, no longer having an enemy in the world. This occasion lasted for a full ten seconds (this time) before a man in a blue suit with a red "S" on its chest appeared out of nowhere, just like Galacta Knight had. Kirby jumped up and looked at him curiously. He'd never eaten one of those before.

Superman came to a halt and faced Kirby, eyes reading his soul. There was no mistaking it; armor or not, this was the same being who was planning on destroying this universe. He breathed in the sunlight; it was very strong here. This planet seemed to have a magical effect that emanated it, which meant this fellow was in for a nasty surprise.

"So," Superman declared, "you want someone to bow to you?"

Kirby jumped excitedly, not quite understanding what he meant, but knew it probably had to do with food and had the words "you want" in it.

Superman suddenly appeared behind Kirby and delivered a full-powered punch that sent him flying into outer space. He followed the flying Kirby as he spun all the way towards the moon before calmly landed on the surface of the celestial body. "Bow to that."

Realizing that this new monster definitely didn't want to give him food, Kirby brought out his cell phone and pushed the one big button on it. As he passed the moon, the Warp Star rushed in and caught him. Not hesitating for a second, he raced toward Superman on the moon's surface, readying an arm to make a fatal punch.

Superman narrowed his eyes and flew upwards slightly. "Prepare to pay for every life you've taken." He readied a punch, intending to end this conflict instantly.

 **-FIGHT!-**

Kirby and Superman's blows connected.

And the moon shattered.

Superman pulled back, surprised as moon chunks flew past him. This pink blob packed quite a punch. Well, to be fair, it had destroyed a planet with a swipe from its sword - which, strangely enough, seemed to have vanished alongside its armor. No time to dwell on that, though.

Superman launched another punch, aimed at Kirby's side, but he met it with equal force and jumped towards Superman, throwing his other arm down to hit him over the head. Superman raised his arms and blocked the blow, then shot out a quick stream of heat vision to force Kirby to back off. Kirby was hit and bounced back, looking mildly surprised. He landed on the Warp Star again and raced in a circle to the other side of Superman, fast enough to catch him off-guard, and hit his back with a kick that sent Superman forward several meters. Superman twisted around, shooting heat vision as he did so. Kirby hopped over the line of heat vision easily and zoomed forward. Superman and his both threw out punches, and they matched once more. The two threw several further ones, each easily blocking the other's barrage of blows before Superman caught Kirby's arm and pulled him towards him. As Kirby's body left the Warp Star, Superman hit him with a knee upwards and Kirby went flying with a baby-like cry.

The Warp Star rushed to Kirby's aid, but he'd already retained control over his momentum. He transformed suddenly, granting himself the Needle ability, complete with spike-filled hat. Kirby threw down two sharp needles toward Superman, who instantly vaporized them with heat vision and flew upwards to punch Kirby again. Kirby flipped the Warp Star upside down, right before Superman connected his punch, causing him to impale his hand on several of the needles on Kirby's hat. Superman gave a cry of pain and tore his hand away.

Superman looked at his bleeding hand, shocked. "That…was magic." He let out another quick cry when a massive spike impaled itself through his shoulder. He tore it out and immediately threw it right back at Kirby, who opened up his mouth large enough for the large needle to enter. The moment it had gone through, Kirby closed his mouth and then spat out a star at Superman. Superman backhanded it away, and grimaced from the pain. He lifted his hand in order to get a better look at it. The wounds had already healed, and his shoulder was healing quite quickly, so why had tossing away that star-shaped thing hurt?

Oh, no.

Kirby rolled up into a spiky ball and launched off the Warp Star at Superman, who barely dodged in time. He paused as he realized why this…marshmallow was powerful enough to match him and why things weren't bouncing off of his aura like normal. The needles weren't magic. This entire _creature_ was magic.

Kirby gave him more proof instantly by transforming into Bomb Kirby, whereupon he threw dozens of bombs at Superman. The first hit him, exploding and forcing him backwards with a grunt of pain, but he apparently learned quickly, and, with a gust of frost breath, turned every other bomb to ice before they could hit him. Another gust of normal breath and they were sent at Kirby, who ejected his ability in order to inhale with enough power to suck up every bomb sent at him and spit them out, now turned to stars, at Superman. Superman frowned and used his super breath to scatter the lot of them away.

"Nice try, but you lack any long-range capabilities," Superman informed Kirby. "How about you quit now and save yourself the- UGH!"

Kirby had transformed into Hammer Kirby and thrown his hammer at Superman, knocking him far and away. Kirby retrieved his hammer and declared "Hiya!" happily. He didn't need long-range attacks when the Warp Star gave him range wherever he wanted. He spotted Superman, still flying away, and headed for him. He caught up to him quickly, and delivered another blow from the hammer, knocking him further ahead. Again, he surged forward and hit him again, then once more before zooming ahead of his flight, raising the hammer, and charging it up. As Superman hurtled towards him, he let loose a final, powerful blow, smashing Superman miles downward, where he continued to hurtle before crash-landing on an unsuspecting planet. Kirby didn't give him room - he used the Warp Star to follow Superman downward.

Superman breathed heavily after hitting the planet. The attacks had hurt quite a bit, and the last one had even drawn blood, though it was all quickly healing. He couldn't afford to waste more energy recovering from wounds. It was time to stop holding back. He stood up.

Kirby appeared, flying through the atmosphere. He threw the hammer at Superman again, but Supes was ready this time. He flew forward slightly, judged the angle of the spinning hammer, and deftly grabbed it out of the air. He held up the hammer and raced towards a surprised Kirby with it, and delivered a powerful side-swipe, knocking Kirby off the Warp Star and far to the left. The Warp Star immediately gave chase, but so did Superman. As Kirby crashed into the side of a mountain, leaving quite an imprint on it, Superman charged up the hammer and threw it back at him. The hammer hit Kirby and drove him further into the mountainside. The copy ability vanished, his headband and weapon fizzling out of existence.

Superman calmly flew to the mountain, resting just outside of the hole. "Well, have you had your fun? Or perhaps you'd like to destroy this planet, too?"

Kirby popped out holding a hand cannon in his stubby arms. It shot out four cannonballs - which Superman effortlessly dodged before destroying the Cracker with a swipe of his hand. "Well, if you want to play like that…" Superman backed up and charged up a blast from his heat vision. A few seconds later, it released, perfectly carving a massive hole in the mountain that broke all the way through, mashing Kirby through it with a "Wah!" Superman flew right through the hole and landed next to Kirby. "If you-"

Kirby interrupted him by transforming into Ghost Kirby and grabbing his head from behind, trying to possess him. Superman felt his influence, but he'd studied more than long enough to prevent any kind of manipulation. "Attacking my mind, huh?" He threw his head backwards, knocking Kirby off of it, and delivered a quick one-two punch combo followed by him putting his hands together and hitting Kirby upwards with them. He flew up, readying another punch.

But Kirby was getting pretty tired of being a punching bag. As Superman rose up, he transformed into Fighter Kirby and matched his punch with one of his own. He instantly did a leg sweep, catching Superman's neck and knocking him to the side. Kirby took the opportunity to call the Warp Star, which flew straight up and snatched Kirby out of the air. Well, the space. Kirby flew to the reeling Superman and hit him with a smash punch, sending him up, and followed with a devastating rising break. Then he flew above the continually rising Superman, who was now gasping in pain, and began pelting him with a combination of vulcan jabs and stars from the Warp Star, reversing his previous force and sending Superman crashing back down to the planet. To finish it all off, He jumped off the Warp Star and deliver one last punch to Superman's chest - one so powerful, cracks formed in the ground and before he knew it, the entire planet had cracked in two. Superman was driven through the center and exited the bottom of the planet with a scream.

Kirby yawned once. He was going to need a nap soon to recharge; he wasn't used to taking so much punishment. He'd better finish this first, though. He spat out a Stomper Boot and hopped inside of it, then the Warp Star collected him upon mental command. He flew down to where he'd seen the gasping Superman and…nothing? Suddenly an entire half of the planet he'd just broken crashed into him, forcing him down. Kirby instantly hopped out of the boot and hit the half with another punch, smashing it to bits. The Warp Star zoomed him up to where the planet half had come from and-

And Superman grabbed Kirby right off the Warp Star and flew away with him. He reached this place's sun, flew a circle around it, gaining energy as he did so, and then threw Kirby down to the planet's other half. As soon as he'd been thrown, Superman hit him with a full-powered blast of heat vision, driving him down until he hit the half-planet with enough force to crack it in half _again_. Superman tore downwards towards Kirby - and regretted it when he was struck with something magical at the end of a rope.

Kirby pulled back the yo-yo and mentally called the Warp Star, which picked him up and brought him to Superman instantly. He launched the yo-yo out and up, hitting Superman in the chin, and then stopped his momentum by wrapping him around the string. Kirby pulled Superman toward him, then sent him back out with a punch, then pulled him towards him, then sent him back out with another punch. He repeated this twice before Superman broke the chain by freezing the yo-yo with his ice breath and shattered the whole thing with a flex of the muscles. Kirby transformed into Beam Kirby and grabbed Superman with a grappling beam. Superman cried out once, but got over it quickly and used his heat vision to incinerate Kirby's wand before it could do anything. Kirby was suddenly very unhappy; Beam was one of his favorite abilities, and this monster hadn't even let him use it for five full seconds!

Superman wasn't feeling too badly for Kirby, though. He charged up his heat vision and flew backwards slightly to get a better angle. He charged some more and…released. A stream of heat vision as big as himself headed right for Kirby. And then…back at him? Superman dodged his own blast instantly, and saw Kirby had put up some kind of reflector shield. He was in yet another new form; this one looking surprisingly similar to the last. But, instead of a wand, he had a…uh, oh.

The Warp Star flew into Superman, knocking him back and allowing Mirror Kirby to plunge the energy sword right into Superman's chest. Superman gasped as the magical blade pierced his skin, and used his super breath instantly to blow Kirby backwards and away from him. The Warp Star caught Kirby, and he charged up his sword for something. Less than two seconds later, Kirby released the energy beam, and it struck Superman full-force and enveloped him. The beam lasted for several seconds, and when it was done…Superman was fine.

More than fine. Superman raised his right arm and flexed it. "A beam made of sunlight? You really don't know anything about kryptonians, do you?"

Kirby gave out a questioning look.

"Allow me to show you."

Superman rushed at Kirby. Kirby put up his barrier, but Superman broke it with a single punch. He then hit Kirby with another punch that sent him into the remaining moon of the planet they'd obliterated. Once there, Kirby became Tornado Kirby, twirled around, and centered himself inside a massive tornado, greater than any Earth had ever seen, strong enough to part entire oceans. Superman landed on the moon and, seeing the tornado, clapped once. The shockwave of the clap immediately dissipated the whole thing. Superman grabbed Kirby and blasted him with heat vision even stronger than his previous blast. Kirby cried out as his ability vanished. Kirby didn't give up, though, and transformed into a massive Tankbot. He shot out dozens of missiles at Superman, but the man of steel blew them out of his way with a single breath. Tankbot Kirby charged up his rocket-powered boxing glove and launched a flying punch, but Superman took hold of the glove and crumpled the whole thing easily. Superman kicked tankbot Kirby into the air, froze him into a block of ice, then piledrived him back into the ground, shattered the ice and reverting the object to a very woozy and sleepy Kirby.

Superman rose into the air. "Pathetic. You think you're strong because you sit on a pile of bodies that could never fight back. I don't kill my enemies. I let them grow. Adapt. I let them face me again, if they wish. That means that I have to change and adapt along with them. I don't kill, and it's made me strong." His eyes began burning. "But I think I'll make an exception here." He blasted.

Kirby recovered just in time and spat out a Prism Shield, which reflected the blast back at Superman. The kryptonian cried out in shock and Kirby took the opportunity to eat his emergency food: a Maxim Tomato. Feeling his energy fully restored, Kirby transformed into Ninja Kirby and teleported behind Superman before unleashed a quick-draw with his sword, cutting him across the chest. He then teleported to the top of a nearby dune-like rock and threw out hundreds of sharp kunai at the bleeding alien. Superman turned and incinerated most of them with heat vision, but a few struck his side and pierced his skin. Superman tore them out and let his healing factor do its work.

Ninja Kirby jumped to the ground, turned invisible, slid under Superman, and flew into the air with his blade outstretched. Superman, however, could see him perfectly well, and surprised Kirby by kicking the katana out of his hand. He tried to hit Kirby again, but the puffball teleported to retrieve his katana and then teleported right above the man of steel, bring it down to plunge through his skull.

The only thing that saved Superman was his body's training to react to his environment automatically. He dodged to the right before he even knew what was happening, and flew out of the moon's atmosphere and towards the sun. Kirby, for his part, called upon the Warp Star and followed him. When they were only a few miles from the sun, Superman halted. Not realizing this, Kirby zoomed right past him. Superman blew him forward with his super breath and into the blazing star. Right before he hit it, Kirby transformed into Ice Kirby and blew himself backwards, using his frost breath to counter the heat and gravity of the sun. Superman caught up to him and attempted to use his own ice breath to counter Kirby's. The Kirby turned to him, and the two blew their breath at each other. The ice breath and frost breath collided in mid-air, and the very molecules around them began to turn to ice. The Warp Star caught Kirby, preventing him from hitting the sun, and the two flew around the massive star, constantly matching their ice breath. Slowly, but surely, even the sun turned to ice as the power of the two beings competed with each other. When the entire star had turned into an ice cube thousands of times the size of a planet, Superman stopped, ducked under Kirby's frost breath, flew to the other side of the star, and pushed. Sure enough, the entire icicle fell through space towards an unsuspecting Kirby.

Superman rubbed his hands together. "That should take care of-WHAT?"

The iced star began to warp and distort as it entered a rainbow-colored Kirby's mouth. Hypernova Kirby had entered the picture.

Hypernova Kirby began inhaling. Superman found himself greatly struggling to move - and without a sun, although he could see just fine, he wasn't getting power consistently. He grit his teeth and tried to escape. A planet rushed by and entered Kirby's mouth. Then another. And another. Superman was using up all his solar energy just to not get sucked up, as Kirby gained entire planets in his bid to do away with the kryptonian. Before long, every planet in the solar system was gone, and Kirby had stopped inhaling.

Now Superman had something much worse to worry about.

Hypernova Kirby ejected all the star power he'd gained from the solar system in one continuous beam at Superman. The man of steel was hit full-force by the blast, and screamed in incredible levels of pain as the blast shot him entire galaxies away.

When he recovered, he was badly injured and burned…everywhere. He needed time and a place to recover. Wait, this new solar system had a sun. Cutting through his pain, Superman raced to the sun and plunged inside of it. His wounds began healing, and his power began growing.

But he wasn't in there two minutes when an invincible Kirby found him and punched him out of the star.

Superman grunted, but his power had already resurrected itself. He was going to win this.

Then Kirby plunged out of the star atop his Warp Star, invincibility having worn off. He transformed into Sword Kirby, and pulled out his golden blade and pointed it at Superman.

Superman blinked. "That sword-"

Kirby launched a sword beam, which Superman narrowly dodged. The beam struck a nearby planet and carved it in two.

Superman turned to Kirby, anger fully rekindled. "So, you finally show it, do you? Let's see how it stands up to me!"

Kirby responded by racing towards Superman and stabbing through his stomach.

Superman cried out in shock, but used the opportunity well. He slid forward on the sword and unleashed a full wave of heat vision on the living Q-tip. Kirby bounced away from it, taking his sword with him. The stab was healing right away.

Kirby steadied himself and threw another sword beam at Superman, but he'd apparently expected it. He dodged the beam deftly, along with the next two Kirby threw. He reached Kirby and Kirby utilized his skills to dodge the blows of this powerful alien and land several cuts of his own. The two dodged and attack for some time before Superman managed to grab the blade of the sword. Although it cuts into his hand and hurt horribly, a solid push and twist snapped the sword into two.

Kirby backed up. Since a slicing weapon had worked so well, he'd try another. His favorite. He put his stubby hands together and pulled them apart. Inside them was what looked like and extra-long handle to a sword. But not just any sword. Kirby pressed a button, and both blades of the double-sided lightsaber shot out. Kirby raced towards Superman, who pushed against his arm to knock the first blade off-balance, but Kirby simply plunged forward with the other blade, and it burned its way through his arm. Superman let go a shout and kicked Kirby away, but the Warp Star brought him back instantly. Superman tried to defend, but the weapon had too much range and did too much damage for him to take any risks. If he wanted to compete, he'd need a weapon to match.

Wait…

Superman kicked Kirby away and tore off. He used the position of the stars around him to know where he was going - he'd found his way to this planet by himself many times before.

When he finally reached Earth, he stood still, shocked. The planet was nothing but a wasteland. It was clearly once something great, but had long since fallen into what appeared to be nuclear winter. Superman shook his head. It wasn't his Earth. So long as it had what he needed, everything would be fine.

He whispered "I'm sorry it won't rest peacefully, Diana," and rammed into the atmosphere.

Kirby caught up to him shortly afterward. He'd also traveled this path before, and was mildly curious as to why Superman would come here. Mildly curious. Then he saw Superman flying back up through the atmosphere of Shiver Star, holding…something. Well, whatever it was it was about to be cut in half. He raised his lightsaber, timed the blow, and brought it down.

The plasma blade stopped on the blade of a new sword.

Kirby flew backwards as Superman spoke. "You have your weapon, I have this one. Mine can cut through atoms. I wonder which is stronger?" He raised the silver blade. "Let's find out."

"Poyo!" Kirby cheered. He loved swordfights - mostly because he usually won.

The two flew at each other and clashed weapons. Neither broke through the other. Superman slid his blade under Kirby and stabbed forward, but Kirby simply twirled his to knock it back and then caught the broadside of the blade on the point of his lightsaber's right end. He bounced it off and twirled to cut through Superman's neck, but Superman ducked under the slice and brought his blade to the left, sliding across the lightsaber and heading for Kirby's eye. Kirby quickly shoved upward with his left-most blade, throwing the sword to the side. The two fought similarly for some time, but ultimately Kirby proved the better swordsman, garnering several burns and slices on Superman, with his foe not even landing a single slice. However, with an expertly-timed slash, Superman caught his sword in Kirby's handle, breaking the lightsaber apart. Kirby pulled away instantly, having realized the danger he was in, but Superman was having none of it. He threw the sword, twirling through the air (relatively speaking) at Kirby. If it were to hit him, he'd be carved in half. Kirby, luckily, had a more than adequate defense: he opened his mouth and swallowed the sword whole. Then he gained a huge green cap with stars and wings embedded on it and a sword a dozen times bigger than him that radiated pure destructive force. He had the Ultra Sword.

"Oh, no," Superman groaned. Kirby rammed forward with the blade, but Superman ducked under it. Kirby flew at the sun and quickly slashed through it, cutting the whole thing in half and providing an opportunity to turn around before it exploded. Both Kirby and Superman went flying from the Supernova, though neither seemed particularly hurt. Kirby sliced several times at Superman, who dodged every blow by a hair's breadth. He needed to get rid of that thing, now. The next time Kirby went in for a blow, Superman ducked under and punched the arm holding it, sending the Ultra Sword flying out of Kirby's hands. He then himself picked up the sword and swung it.

The Warp Star ducked Kirby out just in time and pulled him far away from Superman. Superman closed that distance quickly and swung. Kirby flew up and away from the swing, then tore off, full speed, for the other side of the solar system. The moment he reached it, he turned back and headed straight for Superman. The two flew towards each other, and while he was flying, Kirby transformed into Crash Kirby. He built up a supernova-sized blast in the palm of his hand, and, as the two met, unleashed it on the Ultra Sword.

Neither Kirby nor Superman really remembered what happened, only that it hurt.

Kirby woke up seconds later without his Warp Star, in a new solar system, being punched by Superman. Kirby quickly matched his next punch, then used judo to twirl him around and send him flying downwards. He brought out his cell phone and called the Warp Star. The vehicle was in sight within two seconds, but Superman had grown tired of this battle. With a shout of "Enough!" he caught up to the Warp Star, grabbed it, and, lifting it above his head and straining, tore it down the middle.

"There's no escape this time," he declared, and, with one massive punch, sent Kirby down to another planet, this one filled with grass, trees, and wildlife. Superman landed and dropped the broken Warp Star on the ground. "Can you still keep up with me without that thing?"

An idea sparked in Kirby's head. It was possible…

Kirby instantly began inhaling and the Warp Star's remains flew into his mouth. Kirby focused, and, surprising both him and Superman, the Star Rod appeared in his hand.

"One final transformation, is that it?" Superman rolled his eyes. "Fine, if you must."

Kirby threw out several stars at him, but Superman destroyed most with his heat vision and simply batted away the rest. Kirby inhaled deeply. He hadn't realized how much power he'd been taking, constantly transforming and using his powers while still being whaled on at every second. If this didn't work…He threw out four more stars, each powerful enough to destroy a moon. But Superman just slapped them away like pebbles.

"You're done. We both know that you can't win. So," Superman offered, "how about you let go of that wand, I turn you in to whatever authorities there are in this universe, and nobody dies?"

Kirby didn't understand him, and probably wouldn't have listened if he did. They were too far gone in this fight to turn back. Kirby held the Star Rod back and charged it. "Hiya!"

"This is over. Put down the wand."

Kirby charged further.

Superman crossed his arms and held his ground.

Kirby fired the beam. It was massive; easily enough to one-shot the most powerful of deities and destroy entire solar systems.

It came at an unyielding Superman.

It hit him.

And he stood.

Seemingly unaffected, Superman began to walk through the center of the beam, closer and closer to Kirby, who was desperately pouring more and more power into the beam.

Superman reached Kirby, reached out with one hand, and grasped the Star Rod. "Stop it!" He twisted his wrist, and, shocking Kirby, the Star Rod snapped. The stream stopped instantly, revealing an angry Superman directly in front of him. "I said this was over!" Superman grabbed Kirby's whole body with his other hand, and, as desperately as he tried, Kirby couldn't escape his grasp.

Superman closed his eyes and felt Kirby helplessly struggle against him. His heat vision built up inside him. He'd have to do something he'd never done before in order to kill this creature: a localized, direct Solar Flare. Energy built up inside of him; all his solar energy left his other body parts and entered only into his right hand. Superman opened his eyes and his hand began to glow bright red. He looked at the fearful expression on Kirby's face and felt his gut twist. But he'd given this creature many chances. Too many. It was time to finish this.

He whispered "I'm sorry," and the Solar Flare released. Coming entirely from the hand holding Kirby, the energy enveloped him. Superman thought he saw him switch forms one last time, to some form with a hat made of fire, before the blast was released, but it really didn't matter. He'd lost such forms when hit by a lot of power before; and this was far more than the cotton ball could take. The red solar energy was entirely localized around Kirby, and he felt the full force of the energy. The moment it all hit him, he stopped moving.

When the smoke cleared, there he was. A black, smoking version of what was once a mighty foe. Perhaps the mightiest Superman had ever faced. Superman bowed his head once before dropping the body to the ground. He himself dropped to one knee. He was completely powerless; it felt foreign to him. He stood up. It was time to return to his own dimension. This crisis had been averted.

Then he heard a snore.

Superman whipped around, shocked beyond belief. The blackened body of Kirby wasn't dead. It was just asleep.

"No…NO!" Superman cried out. How had he survived? There should be no way to survive something like what he'd done. Well, it didn't matter now. The moment the puffball woke up and realized he had no powers, he was dead. He needed his powers back - and fast. He looked up at the sun. If only he could reach it, go inside it…

He cracked his knuckles. He'd nearly forgotten about the flight ring. It would finally prove to be more than sentimental. He took off into the skies, heading full speed (which wasn't actually that fast, comparatively) towards the star.

Back on the planet. Kirby awoke, energy fully restored. He yawned, stretched, and patted himself on the back for surviving. He looked up at the sky and…there he was, the being that tried to kill him for no reason and ruined his lunch. It was time to finish him.

Kirby concentrated and used a chunk of his Star Power to create a brand-new Warp Star. It hovered in front of him eagerly, and Kirby hopped on, smiling. It took after Superman at blinding speed.

Superman was almost there. He could practically taste the sunlight. His powers had already been restored slightly - at least, enough to hear a yawn from the planet below and a very…familiar sound. He glanced back, eyes widening in horror as he realized Kirby had somehow received a new Warp Star and was catching up alarmingly fast. No. He couldn't lose, not after all this! Superman put all his power he was gaining towards his flight and gave the ring all it could. If he was to survive, he needed to be in that sun.

He came closer, being able to touch the very streams of boiling plasma ejected from the star. Kirby came closer still. He'd have Superman within two seconds.

Superman rammed ahead. Kirby rammed faster.

The two reached the star microseconds away.

And Kirby missed his swipe at Superman by a nanometer.

Superman plunged into the burning star, reaching the center quickly. The radiation was so strong, so fierce, he felt as if he was about to explode. His cells healed and built themselves further. He began recharging. And there was little Kirby could do to stop him.

He charged, and charged, and charged. Then, he turned, while still inside the sun, and used his X-ray vision to see outside of it. There was Kirby, circling the star. He rose his hand and clenched it into a fist. He was stronger than he'd ever been; Kirby stood no chance.

But Kirby had been sleeping. And in his sleep, Kirby found focus and energy.

Moving trillions of times faster than light, Superman ejected himself from the star and punched Kirby off his Warp Star. Another punch and the Warp Star was torn to shreds. Kirby woke up to the pain of being hit by a godly Superman. He crashed into the planet, creating an enormous crater.

Superman didn't stop to think. He rushed forward, and pulled every bit of the solar energy he'd absorbed into his left fist again. He then began rapidly vibrating it, harnessing the Speed Force. One final Solar Flare attack, a hundred times stronger than the previous one, mixed with the Infinite Mass Punch. Nothing in the multiverse could survive this attack.

He flew at Kirby, going full speed. When he was only a few meters away, his fist was brought forward. It launched itself, along with the entirety of Superman, right at Kirby.

And right into his open mouth.

Superman's eyes popped as he realized his fatal mistake, but there was no time to do anything. There was nothing, not even a final "No!" before he disappeared forever.

A blue suit with a red cape and a stylized "K" emblem in the center appeared on Kirby's body. He jumped up and began flying effortlessly, then used heat vision to burn down a nearby tree. A high-spirited "Hiiiii!" indicated he was quite pleased with his newest copy ability.

 **-KO!-**

Woah, woah, woah! Pitchforks down! Wha- is that tar and feathers? No! Stop! Just…let me explain, okay?

This fight was…not an easy one. Both have so many feats that are absolutely incredible, so it's very hard to narrow down where and how that kind of power takes shape. So I figured a little math was a good start. Now, both have done some ridiculous things (like Superman lifting Specter and Kirby breaking an unbreakable shield) that just can't be measured by science, so we're going to say these kinds of feats beyond anything physically possible cancel each other out, and judge who's generally more powerful based on the math I've been able to do. 

**Strength:**

 _Kirby:_ Kirby's greatest feat of strength would be when he redirected Gerath, a meteor stated to be the size of a moon on several occasions, away from Popstar with mere cannonballs. This meteor was mostly composed of magma contained through unknown means, alongside some amount of igneous rock. Magma generally weighs 3100 kg/m^3, and normal igneous rock can be lowballed to 2500 kg/m^3, so if the meteor was made of 50/50 magma and rock, and assuming it's about the size of our Earth moon (especially since it caused so many similar meteorological effects when it entered Popstar's atmosphere), this thing weighs in at 67,772,744,885,944,000,512 tons, or about 67.7 sextillion tons. That's not all, though. Now, Gerath was, at one point, about as far away as the sun, and it reaches Popstar in about two days. As we've already explained, their "Sun" is likely Hotbeat, which we've already shown to be approximately 168,900,000 miles away. Comparing Gerath's size, that makes it about 2.6 million miles away. This means that Gerath was traveling at a rate of 54,166.7 miles per hour. When Kirby sent it back, it reached that same spot in only 40 seconds! This puts the end speed at least at 234,000,144 MPH! Running this through simple mathematics and taking into account the angle and distance they moved the meteor, we find the amount of force those cannonballs must have hit it with is a bare minimum of 275.5 Octillion Tons. Since Kirby is made with the magic of the stars, which is equal everywhere in his body, his spitting power and his physical strength must be equivalent. So that's a total of 275.5 Octillion Tons of force.

 _Superman:_ I measured over a dozen of Superman's strongest measurable feats, and the most impressive of the bunch turns out to be the time he helped move the Megaddon. During this story arc, an old weapon named the Megaddon was able to control Superman's mind and forced him to go inside the machine and use his strength on the gears in order to keep it going. Because of the rules of force distribution, the amount of force from the inside to get this thing to start moving should be equal to or more than the object's total weight. Luckily, we can figure that out by comparing the Anti-Sun on its nose to the Earth-Moon system and then comparing that to the rest of the ship. According to these estimations, the total volume of this weapon should be around 454 sextillion cubic meters. Now we need the density, which…is harder to figure out, since we're never even given a hint as to the material its made with or its density. However, it was chained to a black hole for an incredibly long time and, despite being somewhat near that same black hole, wasn't damaged. One scientist's article has estimated that in order for a material to survive being next to a black hole, it should be at least ten thousand times as dense as our most dense material on earth: osmium. Using that as a base, and not taking into account the fact that the device is mostly hollow in order to compensate for using a minimum density, it should weigh about 113,119,444,707,577,672,000,000,000,000 tons. Note that this doesn't take speed into account, as the Megaddon already had an engine capable of supplying the speeds necessary. It just needed Superman to move the gears with enough force to keep it going, which should be just outmatching its weight. That's 113.12 Octillion Tons of force.

 **Speed:**

 _Kirby:_ Kirby on his own two feet isn't incredibly fast, except in reaction time, moving, at best, around the speed of light if we amp it up because of the time he chased some lasers. However, this isn't really a factor since he has the Warp Star. He's used it plenty of times in battle and has clearly been able to react to everything while on it. Even if it's destroyed, Kirby can always make another one at very little cost. The Warp Star's upper limit is unknown, but it has traveled to Shiver Star, a post-apocalyptic Earth, before. Stupidly impressive, as, according to the Kirby's Dream Land 3 instruction manual, Popstar resides at the very edge of the universe. Now, the known universe stretches to about 13.8 billion light-years away from Earth. And, while we don't have an exact time it took for him to reach Shiver Star, we know it didn't take long, as Dark Matter was capable of infesting entire planets over the course of a few hours and nothing had changed when Kirby returned. That being said, we do have a definite limit on how SLOW it could have gone. In the official manga, it was stated in passing that the entirety of Kirby 64 took place in less than a week. Even assuming that Kirby spent a full three days traveling to Shiver Star and the same amount of time traveling back, spending his remaining day on all of his many adventures and traveling to every other planet across the universe and back as well, and not taking into account that scientists have estimated that the full size of the universe is likely at least 250x the size of the observable universe, that's still moving at (and reacting at) 1,126,736,529,860,190,000,000 (1.1 Sextillion) MPH.

 _Superman:_ After measuring out six of Superman's best speed feats (you guys have no idea into the amount of work I put into figuring out the size of Apokolips just to measure him against that surfer guy), his fastest was when three versions of him, including the one we're using, flew to the Andromada Galaxy in a very short time. Being a comic book, the exact time isn't known, but while they were flying, Batman was having his own little adventure on the side. Using this as an approximate timestamp, a fair estimation would be about five minutes. However, we can give both characters the benefit of the doubt and claim the feat was performed in only one minute. At 60 seconds, the Supermen's speed clocks in at 894,844,380,000,000,000,000 (895 Quintillion) MPH.

 **Durability:**

 _Kirby:_ Kirby has survived a crazy number of things, including full blasts of antimatter and dimension-destroying attacks, but most of these are incalculable. So let's go back to the whole Halberd cannon thing. The Destroya-breaking beam (that supposedly hits with the force of a Supernova) lasted exactly 0.16 seconds, and Kirby could endure two blasts that last for 2.76 seconds. That's a total of 34.5 blasts' worth. If each blast is one supernova, that's 824.55 Octillion Megatons. However, I want to stress that this was Kirby when he was very young and still training. He's since taken similar beams from beings like Marx for nearly seven full seconds. However, since there's no way to prove that these beams are as powerful as the Halberd's cannon, I decided to go with the numbers on this one.

 _Superman:_ Superman has also survived an insane amount of things, but his biggest feat was undoubtedly surviving the explosion of the Source Wall, which is a wall that separates entire universe and timelines, but this is another one of those immeasurable feats. However, he did survive an explosion fifty times that of a Supernova, which explodes with the force of at least 10^44 Joules, while weakened, so…1.195 Nontillion Megatons, everyone.

 **Results:**

Strength:

Kirby: 275.5 Octillion Tons

Superman: 113.12 Octillion Tons

Speed:

Kirby: 1.1 Sextillion MPH

Superman: 895 Quintillion MPH

Durability:  
Kirby: 824.55 Octillion Megatons  
Superman: 1.195 Nontillion Megatons

As you can clearly see, Kirby handily takes both Strength and Speed, while Superman takes the trophy in durability - though this is still debatable. But, you say, what about the idea of Superman's infinite strength? Even without those feats of lifting Specter or that book, his maximum potential says his strength is limitless, right? In response, well, even if Superman's strength _is_ infinite (which is up for debate), that doesn't guarantee a win against Kirby in the strength department. Remember the time Kirby clashed with Magolor? At this time, Kirby was wielding the Ultra Sword, which can cut through absolutely anything, and Magolor blocked it with his energy shield, which, being infinitely powered, is unable to be broken. It was literally a match between an unstoppable force and an immoveable wall. Since these two objects were being wielded by actual beings in this case, the only way one could win is if they surpassed the other if the strength department, being able to force the other down until they couldn't hold their object's power any longer. This made the whole thing basically a cosmic arm wrestle, and, since Magolor had infinite strength, he should have won effortlessly. But Kirby outmatched his strength anyway because…he's Kirby.

Now, I'm not saying Kirby is physically superior to Superman. The numbers may say so, but numbers can only go so far in measuring what these two are capable of. I bring all of this up and showcase this math in order for you to understand what I do: that Superman does NOT eclipse Kirby in physical ability. If you can accept the two as possible equals, that's all I ask. In all my research, the conclusion I've come to is that, at the very least, they're in the same realm of physical capabilities. That's all I ask you accept.

But once you do, that's when the cracks start to show up in the idea of Superman's victory.

With his over a thousand years of fighting under his belt (even if the majority was with completely different powers), Superman certainly has more experience than Kirby, but Kirby still takes the skill advantage. When evenly powered, Superman lost a boxing match against Muhammed Ali (no disrespect intended towards that guy, he's the best thing ever), while Kirby won his match against a boxer created by Nightmare to be one of the best in the galaxy. And in a world with the likes of Knuckle Joe and the Master Hand/Crazy Hand duo, that's saying something. Not to mention that Kirby's martial arts have proven themselves against other Star Warriors and masters, while Superman was wrecked by the likes of Green Arrow and Alfred via their martial arts. And due to Kirby being made entirely of an energy of the universe, he had no cells or brain to destroy via heat vision or pressure points to be exploited.

Kirby's arsenal of copy abilities and weapons is also far superior to Superman's. It's true that no one copy ability or weapon is as powerful as one of Superman's main abilities, but Supes has a total of maybe eleven abilities he can use properly in this fight (and that's stretching it), while Kirby has over fifty different copy abilities, over a dozen items and weapons, several other superpowers, and the ability to combine his copy abilities together, not even mentioning his Super Abilities. And Kirby can switch in between all of these at will, and each one provides him with a brand-new fighting style for Superman to get used to, and, as we've established, he doesn't do that too well.

Superman was fast enough to outmatch the Star Warrior Sense's ability to predict its opponent's moves, but it still let Kirby know where he usually was, nullifying his invisibility and super-ventriloquism. The Super Flare wouldn't work too well, either. Kirby could just use the Invincibility Candy or the Fire ability (which protects him from heat) or fly away with the Warp Star long before the ability actually goes off. Or, while Superman's charging it, he could always just eat him. That'd end it real fast. Superman might - MIGHT, be able to figure out the counter-vibration to Kirby and try to erase him with a scream, but that's incredibly unlikely. Not only has he been unable to do it to any of his foes after True Darkseid, but Kirby's unnatural nature as a force of the universe means that figuring out how to cancel him out would be way harder than doing it to a normal physical being. Plus, Kirby could always suck up the soundwave; he's done it before. Or he could use the Warp Star to get out of the way. Heck, even if it collided with him, it's possible it wouldn't even work, since he took an energy-based attack meant to do something very similar and it did no real harm. Superman couldn't even hide inside a sun until coming out more powerful than anything Kirby's ever fought, because Kirby is nowhere near patient enough to let him do it. The Fire Ability, the Invincibility Candy, and especially Hypernova Kirby all counter this tactic quite well. Heck, he might not even need those things, since he's had an entire adventure on the surface of Hotbeat, which we're pretty sure is Dreamland's sun. And even if Superman does manage to knock Kirby out, he'll recover in less than a minute, while knocking Superman out usually means he's sleeping for hours to come.

But what really ends this is Kirby's main ability to just eat whatever he's fighting. Superman is definitely light enough to be sucked up, so he always has to be on his toes in order to not be caught unaware and get inhaled, as eating Superman just ends this fight instantly. Also, the inhale and copy ability meant that unless Superman never used his powers aside from physical ones, Kirby never runs out of copy abilities. He'd always have Tornado, Ice, and…maybe Fire, maybe Beam, maybe Laser, at the ready whenever Superman used one of these attacks. To top it all off, Kirby and all of his abilities and most of his weapons are made of magic, which passes through Superman's bio-electric aura and hits his physical body. Previously, Superman has been able to take a punch from the Claw of Horus, which can destroy planets and is also made of magic, and passed out for a few minutes afterward. Since Kirby is also magical and can also destroy an entire planet with a single punch, it's not unreasonable to say he could do the same thing, and then eat Superman while he's asleep. Technically speaking, a single sword beam or slash from the Ultra Sword would be enough to finish the fight. And recall that while Superman's been knocked out and defeated many times, even at his full potential, Kirby's never been defeated in a single physical fight.

And yet, Superman's beaten unbeatable foes before. He's toughed out and killed even Captain Marvel and Hercules, who are supposed to be around his level physically (like Kirby) and magical (like Kirby). So with that being known, why should Kirby be any different? Why should he lose to Kirby when he defeats characters that, at first glance, compare?

The difference is in the core of their characters. That's what it really comes down to.

When faced up against virtually any other fictional character, Kirby and Superman both would, most of the time, win. That's the entire point of their characters; they aren't meant to lose. Superman is an ideal. He's the perfect man in both power and morality. He's faced hundreds of foes that are insanely powerful and won. Even his weaknesses, including Kryptonite, continually lessen in power for the sake of making him unbeatable. At this point in his story, he's unlocked every bit of his potential, which, since he can absorb a limitless amount of solar energy, is theoretically infinite. Superman is always as powerful as he needs to be. Kirby is much the same. He was created in-universe with the ability to always win, and grow in power until foes he at first couldn't face fall before him. It doesn't matter if the monster is a pillow-creature that gives you scary dreams (how evil!) or an omnipotent reality-warper, Kirby will always rise beyond them and win. After battles with the likes of Magolor Soul and Marx, he, too, has reached his full potential, which, since he's made of the infinite power source of Star Power, is theoretically infinite. So it doesn't matter how strong their opponents are, they usually just win anyway. But when faced against EACH OTHER, it's a different story.

Superman has always been an invincible hero…to a point. He rises beyond any physically powerful foe, but there are areas he will never reach, powers he will never have, and beings he can never defeat. Omnipotent beings like True Darkseid and the Source are at a level he has never been able to contend with without outside help. He himself admits this while watching Soulfire Darkseid and the Source do battle. Does he have infinite physical capabilities? Maybe, maybe not, but even if he does, physical capabilities can only get you so far. The officially released Superman biography "Superman: The Ultimate Guide to the Man of Steel" states this fact on Page 25: "Superman's strength levels have fluctuated throughout his career, but he has never had the unlimited power of the Specter or other magical beings. There are always weights he can't lift, enemies he can't outrun, or puzzles he can't solve." It's hard to argue with an official statement released by DC, and this book was only released a few years ago! Superman has a single limit that will never be broken that lies beyond the physical realm. And that's where Kirby breaks this match. Kirby has faced beings with the kind of magical power to match the Specter and won. He's toughed out virtually every threat in the universe, both physical and metaphysical, and risen beyond them. Words like "power" and "capabilities" don't apply to this puffball - and that why using him as any kind of a scale (even a background one) when measuring Dedede in a past fight of mine was a mistake. Kirby is on a level where he just can't be compared to anyone. Heck, the only reason some monsters, like Masher, almost killed him in the past was because he hadn't found out how to harness his powers properly yet. Aside from a few ways (like draining all Star Power from the multiverse), he's essentially undefeatable. That's why he can do things like win an arm wrestle against a being with infinite strength, survive a beam that was made only to erase him from reality, kill somebody who was literally granted the ability to be more powerful than him, and kill the same guy again after he merged with the magic that gave him that power in the first place. Superman has lots of immeasurable feats, but these strike a level beyond that. When gods are granted the power to kill Superman, they usually can. When contesting strength against a being with infinite power, Superman usually loses. When Superman's hit by a beam specifically made to kill him, it usually does. Superman is an incredible hero, an ideal that inspires millions, and a fighter literally made to be physically superior to any other fictional character, but Kirby was made to surpass even that. When someone is so powerful that they defeat omnipotent beings every other week, even fiction's strongest superhero doesn't always win.

So, what do you get when you put a creature who can surpass anything against a man incapable of being surpassed? Well, in the end, even that very ability is something that can be (and has been) surpassed.

Superman just couldn't swallow this one.

 **The winner is Kirby.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle… 

A young man with pointed ears in green clothing throws out a grappling hook, grabbing an enormous eyeball and bringing it to him. He proceeds to plunge his sword into the creature, destroying it.

VS.

An average-looking man in wooden armor throws out a grappling hook, grabbing a platform near an enormous eyeball with teeth. He proceeds to plunge his sword into the creature, destroying it.

(Link vs. Terrarian.)


	10. Link vs Terrarian

**A/N: I had no intention for this battle to coincide with the unfortunate news of Terraria: Otherworld's cancellation. I'm sad. Very sad. Oh, and, somehow, this ended up being stupidly long - probably because both combatants have such obscenely enormous arsenals and I tried the story method of battle again - not incredibly dissimilar to what I did with Light Yagami vs. Lelouch Vi Brittania, but with a fair bit of normal-style action in there, too. Anyway, if you like long fights…this one's 27,000 words long, with a battle that lasts for 9,000 words. You're welcome. Never expect this again.**

 _Episode 9: Link (Legend of Zelda) vs. Terrarian (Terraria)_

Heroism is a trait many of our combatants have possessed, but these two were made to be the very essence of the word. Oh, and they use their massive arsenals alongside their absurdly powerful swords to defeat thousands of monsters and even gods, all while going on many adventures. Link, the Hero of Hyrule, and Terrarian, the Savior of Terraria.

Every incarnation of these characters in comics, shows, and games will be taken into account for the purposes of this battle. Yes, it means I have to dive into Zelda's extensive comic history, but it also means I get to count random Terraria feats (like killing the Eater of Worlds with a copper shortsword) as canon, so I say it evens out. As always, original canon takes precedence. Also, because I don't yet own it and want NO SPOILERS, nothing from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been taken into account in the writing of this battle. Get over it. In addition, time is…weird in the world of Terraria. It gets confusing as to if something should be counted as happening every second or every minute. Because of this, I'm taking everything normal in real time (saying he can swing his swords three times a second and such) while passage of time that's directly measured is translated to in-game time. So a fight that takes four minutes would take four hours, and a buff potion that lasts ten minutes lasts ten hours. Oh, and one more thing: Link's item slots have always exactly matched the amount of items he gets in his adventures, suggesting there's no limit to the magic bag he keep his stuff in, so we're giving him everything. Well, everything that might matter. However, Terrarian only has so many slots in his arsenal, so that's what we'll be filling. To be fair, they both end up having around the same number of items slots filled, and while we could include other Terraria items by usage of, say, the Safe or Piggy Bank, pretty much everything we don't include is just lesser versions of things he already has, and would probably make no difference in who wins or who dies. Thanks for understanding.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.

 **Link:**

Thousands of years ago, three goddesses set upon a dark and formless land to shape it. Forming masses of land, forests, animals, and several races of life, the goddesses Din, Nayru, and Farore imprinted the land, creating the world of Hyrule. And when they went back to the heavens, they left several gifts and a representation of their powers - the Triforce. The Triforce was an incredibly powerful relic capable of theoretically anything by manipulating the Golden Force, a type of spiritual energy. Also left to protect it was the fourth goddess, Hylia. But where there is light, there is always dark, and it wasn't long before the demon Demise rose from the earth, followed by thousands of monsters, and set out to claim the Triforce for his own.

Demise was absurdly powerful - so much so that even with the goddess Hylia at their side, the Hylians (basically a mix of elves and humans) didn't stand a chance. But there was someone who might be able to. His name was Link. That Link…is not the Link we're talking about. But he does lead into the Link, or, well, Links, we all know. Look, this origin story is seriously overcomplicated, so let's just jump back into it. Anyway, after having been wrongfully imprisoned for four years, the people let this Link go because…they really just needed a badass to hold down the fort. And they got one. Wielding the Master Sword, a godly blade forged by Hylia's own hands, Link singlehandedly pushed the entire army of darkness back and held his own against Demise twice. His efforts eventually allowed Hylia to seal Demise away, at the expense of Link's life. In respect (and possibly love) of the green-clad hero, Hylia basically wrote it into reality that another hero bearing his name and abilities would arise once more when he was needed. Oh, and, in order to protect the Triforce, she also gave up her immortal form and reincarnated herself into a mortal girl named Zelda who was bound to the same fate she'd given Link. Because everyone knows that a seventeen-year-old girl can protect a relic of unlimited power way better than a deity can.

Regardless, centuries later, Demise's monsters had managed to loosen the seal of imprisonment on the demon. His efforts to escape tore apart the land and caused all kinds of trouble - but, luckily, the new Link and new Zelda appeared, learned of their fates, and set out to stop him. After plenty of grueling effort and adventures, the new Link faced Demise in a one-on-one confrontation. The two dueled, and, eventually, Link prevailed, slaying the demon once and for all. Or not. Apparently, Demise can do that whole "reincarnate" thing, too. He cursed the spirit of the hero (Link) and the spirit of the goddess (Zelda) to be endlessly reincarnated, always appearing every few generations, and he himself would be reincarnated centuries later as the gerudo Ganondorf, an immortal creature who could transform into the monstrous Ganon, who would plague every incarnation of Link and Zelda until the end of time. Or until one side won; whichever came first.

But Demise really should have thought things through a little better before giving himself a reincarnating nemesis that was literally created by the gods to be the epitome of heroism.

There have been many, many different Links over the centuries, but they all share the same soul - the spirit of the hero, transferred through use of the Triforce. This means that, after realizing their full potential, every new incarnation of Link gains the experience and knowledge of every previous incarnation, as well as having the same personality, skill set, mindset, and, well, everything. Because of this, just taking one Link into account doesn't really make sense - so we'll be doing what pretty much everyone else does and combine every form into one combatant - including weapons. This is pretty much officially documented anyway, thanks to the Triforce of Courage.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that, didn't I? Well, the Triforce was eventually split into three pieces, each belonging to suitable host and granting different abilities. The Triforce of Power went to Ganondorf, the Triforce of Wisdom went to Zelda, and the Triforce of Courage went to Link. However, unlike the other two pieces, the Triforce of Courage no longer has a physical form, instead being imbued into Link's very soul.

" _There are three Triforces, all pieces of the one original Triforce," Zelda explains to Prince Charles. "The Triforce of Power is in the clutches of the evil wizard Ganon. And they say that the Triforce of Courage is buried deep in Link's heart."_

Being one with the Triforce of Courage has plenty of perks. In addition to Link's superhuman capabilities (which, trust me, we'll get into later), the Triforce gives Link superhuman awareness, quick discernment between good and evil, a pool of magic, and protection against dark magic and even other Triforce pieces. All versions of Link also have a special ability called "Z-Targeting," which makes Link instantly aware of where his foe is and completely concentrated on reacting to it. This, plus many other things, makes him an extremely deadly fighter. And, no, it isn't something he can do only via fairies. There have been plenty of games and even comics where he's fully able to use this feature without any outside help. And, of course, it also gave him unrelenting courage and a yearning to do what's right, which usually comes down to saving the world and killing the bad guys.

And with Link's arsenal, destroying monsters is the easiest part of the job. Over the generations, Link's picked up many…many… _many_ different weapons and items to use. Let's start with the basics - his sword. Or, well, swords. Every version of Link has been a master swordsman, easily capable of besting some of the best on the planet, and as such, swords are what he almost always carries into a fight. His most commonly used sword is the Master Sword, the same blade that was used to defeat Demise three times. Originally crafted by Hylia to be wielded by the gods, this unbreakable three-foot piece of metal can kill pretty much any opponent with just one slice, and is so powerful, Link's stated that merely holding the blade is like holding a bolt of lightning. This sword is sharp enough to effortlessly cut through most metals, including iron and steel, and behead the dragon Volvagia with a single chop. In the process, the sword cut through the dragon's scales, which were harder than diamond, like a hot knife through butter. But besides being great for slicing, it comes with a host of other powers. It reflects evil and magical attacks, harms beings outside the physical realm, and, when Link's at full health, it can launch a sword beam capable of reaching fifty feet away that's powerful enough to annihilate a building-sized dam or incinerate forty armed guards and their horses! Also, it can charge up energy from above and perform a Skyward Strike, an energy beam that cuts through giant mechs or even buildings. Or the blade can just charge up and allow Link to perform the secret technique titled the Kaitengiri, or Spin Attack, a technique so powerful, it's forbidden for anyone to use. People tend to turn a blind eye whenever Link does it, though, for obvious reasons. This technique one-shotted a giant worm covered in supposedly impenetrable armor and pierced the unpierceable armor of the dragon warrior Onyx. Also, he's since upgraded the attack, allowing him to perform it for up to ten seconds, though it dizzies him slightly afterward. As a bonus to all of this, the Master Sword can manipulate electricity and absorb kinetic energy. But there's still more to this legendary blade, as it also houses three medallions: the Bombos Medallion, which causes everything in the surrounding area to explode, the Ether Medallion, which covers all enemies in a blast of cold that turns them to ice and reveals invisible things, and the Quake Medallion, which creates huge earthquakes. However, using these medallions does take some of Link's limited supply of magic.

You think that with all that power, there'd be no way to top that sword, right? Wrong. Let's put it like this: if you thought Death Battle gave Link all his best weapons and gear in Link vs. Cloud, prepare to have your mind blown. Link has a variety of other swords that he can switch to if he so wishes, starting with the Great Fairy Sword, a magical two-handed blade that doesn't have any special powers, but is twice as strong as the Master Sword. Yup. Twice as strong as the sword that slices through dragon scales. Better yet is the Biggoron's Sword, which is pretty much the same thing, but, after plenty of training, Link's learned to use this seven-foot blade with only one hand. But if you're going after a real contender, our next stop is the Phantom Sword, which is about as strong as the Master Sword and can do anything it can do except use medallions. But it more than makes up for it with its unique ability: freezing time! With the assistance of Ciela, a fairy that's basically a physical representation of the Triforce of Courage, Link was able to use this blade to freeze time for nineteen seconds every thirty seconds or so, using the time to move out of the way of attacks, go behind his opponent, and completely obliterate him. If you're saying "Well, that sounds stupidly overpowered," that's because it is. However, while it's implied he can use this ability even without Ciela's help, the ability likely suffers as a result. It's unlikely he can use it anywhere nearly as often as he previously had.

But all of these blades pale in comparison to the Master Sword's ultimate form. See, after realizing there were so many better swords out there than the Master Sword (which just seems inexcusable when it's a sword literally made to be the most powerful thing ever), and having obtained total control and dominion over the blade after dueling the sword's internal fighting spirit to standstill (I'm not kidding), one incarnation of Link decided to reforge the sword better than it had ever been. After being rendered by dwarves and bathed in a magical pool of fairy tears, it was reborn as the Golden Sword. Longer, faster, and shinier, the Golden Sword can do everything the Master Sword can do, and do it way better. Its sword beams stretch over twice as long and are far more powerful, it's capable of harming Ganon after he absorbed the full essence of the Triforce, and it's four times stronger and deadlier than the Master Sword. Eat that, Hylia.

" _Hmm," Karuna hums. " You're prepared with a sword this time. Where did you pick up that blunt sword?" He pulls out his own seven-foot blade, far bigger than Link's piece of steel. "I can teach you a little about what a real sword is."_

 _Link crosses his sword over his face. "Why don't you test it?"_

 _The two brace and run towards each other. They clash blades - and Link's sword cuts straight through Karuna's sword, armor, and body with one fatal strike._

You may not believe this, but even that isn't Link's most powerful sword. Behold the Four Sword, a legendary blade forged out of spiritual matter by human and minish hands. Long ago, a great evil rose up (take three guesses as to what that evil was) and a hero clothed in green appeared to stop it. To assist with this, fairy-like creatures from another dimension, the minish, worked together to forge the best sword ever made - the Picori Blade. The hero used this sword on his adventures and, with it as a seal, sealed away the evil forever. Or so he thought. Over a hundred years later, the sorcerer Vaati broke the now-rusted and worn-out Picori Blade with a burst of dark magic, and, to defeat him, an incarnation of Link set out to reforge it. And reforge it he did. After being imbued with the elements of nature and bathed in the Light Force, a similar energy to the Golden Force, it became the Four Sword, which was an improvement on the Picori Blade in every way. It can do pretty much everything the Golden Sword can, from easily slicing through dragon scales to manipulating the elements to throwing powerful sword beams. Oh, and it's also four times more powerful than the Master Sword. But what pushes it beyond the Golden Sword is one very important ability: while using the Four Sword, Link can separate into four copies of himself, complete with all his weapons, knowledge, skill, and physical capabilities, and each one having a completely separate mind and being fully capable of functioning on its own. In fact, it appears to be one of Link's preferred training methods to use the Four Sword in order to separate, then practice against himself before rejoining the souls into one, essentially quadrupling the experience and skill he gains in the time allotted. The only downside? Well, the sword's power decreases when he splits, so when there are four of him parading around, each one's carrying a blade at about the same strength level as the original Master Sword. Also, while it's certainly tough, unlike the previously mentioned swords, the Four Sword is not unbreakable. Eventually, it will wear down and can even be snapped if put under too much pressure, forcing Link to reforge it once more.

But even if he's put in that position mid-fight, Link's got a ridiculous amount of other weapons and items he can use instead. But before that, let's talk about his shield, since Link almost always fights with a sword in his left hand and a shield in his right. Link's had plenty of shields over the years, including the fire-resistant Red Shield and the regenerating Goddess Shield, but his most famous is the unbreakable Hylian Shield, passed down from one incarnation of Link to the next for thousands of years. But he really has no need of it when he's got the Mirror Shield, which is also unbreakable, far lighter, and can reflect and rebound magic and light-based attacks. Plus, it distributes the force on his arm evenly, unlike most other shields, acting as a sort of vibration compressor, so no matter how powerful the strike blocked, Link feels no pain. But with all his other items, the same can't be said for his enemies.

When a sword and shield doesn't get the job done, his go-to sidearm is one of his Bows. He's had a lot over the years, but the two most important are the Sacred Bow and the Nice Bow. With the Sacred Bow, he can shoot four bullseyes from over 100 yards away in under a second - even while being secretly cursed by Ganon to be unable to make his shot, he's somehow still able to get his arrow within a micro-inch of a bullseye. The Nice Bow has shorter range, but can magically transform one arrow into three, one flying straight and the others at left and right angles. And, of course, he has a suitable number of trick arrows. Fire Arrows set foes and torches aflame, Ice Arrows freeze foes solid and create ice platforms over water, Bomb Arrows explode upon impact with enough force to blow up a giant drawbridge, Light Arrows travel at the speed of light but only harm evil, and Silver Arrows pretty much one-shot everything, including a monster who was literally a giant steel ball. To top it all off, he has a single Red Darknut Arrow, which, after being fired, will chase him around until it hits something or someone. But it can kill Link in one shot, so it's pretty dangerous to use. When you factor in the fact that even his normal ammunition, Blue Arrows, can pierce steel, and he has just under a hundred of each of these arrows, you can see why the Bow is one of his favorite sidearms.

But it's far from his only one. The Hyper Slingshot can also reach distances of nearly 100 yards AND magically triples the shots it fires. Normally, it shoots Deku Seeds, which are pretty much oversized walnuts, but Link has five other magical seeds to use as ammo that are far more viable in combat. Ember Seeds set foes and torches aflame, Scent Seeds overpower the senses and draw monsters toward wherever they land, Gale Seeds create a vacuum effect and tiny tornadoes in their wake, Pegasus Seeds stun even heavily armored enemies and can be used without the slingshot to temporarily double Link's speed, and Mystery Seeds do…um, a lot of things. Bring inanimate objects to life, reveal hidden passages, transform jelly monsters into humans, put people to sleep…who knows what all it can do? And he has just under a hundred of each seeds, ensuring he always has ammo. Beyond this, he has a bunch of Bombs that he can throw around. A normal Bomb set on a lit fuse is capable of opening huge gaps in mountains stretching nearly 30 feet in length. Remote Bombs can do the same, but are set off remotely by Link, though he can only place one at a time. Bombchus are a little less powerful, but can move around, fit in small gaps, and are controlled like robots by Link. Finally, Nice Bombs and Super Bombs are capable of creating massive explosions that obliterate enormous rocks over fifty feet high. Oh, yeah, and he ALSO has almost a hundred of each of these.

But while Link's known for his skills with pretty much every traditional weapon, it's his more unique ones that stir interest. His two boomerangs, the Magical Boomerang and the Gale Boomerang, can each fly over 100 feet away and hit nearly a dozen different targets across a huge area before returning to Link's hand. The main difference between the two is this: the Magical Boomerang typically instantly kills everything it touches, while the Gale Boomerang whips up entire tornadoes in its wake. His Hookshot may be iconic, but its top upgrade, the Double Clawshot, is even better. With this, Link has a Clawshot equipped on each of his arms. What's a Clawshot? Well, it's a powerful grappling hook-type machine that not only damages enemies, but can dig into or grasp just about anything and either carry it to Link or carry Link to it at absurd speeds. Link can even stop pretty much wherever he wants mid-way in order to shoot his other Clawshot to grab something else, flying around the place like a green-hatted Spiderman.

The Gnat Hat can turn Link the size of a gnat and back again, the Cane of Pacci shoots out a magical beam the turns things upside down (and holes into trampolines), and the Skull Hammer is powerful enough to smash through the crown of the Helmaroc King, which is stronger than steel. The Sand Wand gives Link minor control over sand, the Bug Net catches bugs and…magic, the Beetle is a remotely piloted drone that can scope out areas and trigger traps, The Mole Mitts let Link tunnel through dirt like it's thin air, and the Mogma Mitts do the same for solid rock. A Blue Ring gifted by an undercover Ganon contains a hidden compartment with sleeping gas, the Stop Watch takes some time to set up but will stop time for everyone but Link for several minutes, and the Long Hook reaches over a hundred feet away, grabs enemies, pots, or, well, whatever, and magically switches it and Link's places, leaving the pot where he was and him where the pot was. The Gust Jar can suck up foes and spit them out with enough force to smash through a wall. How powerful is this suction? Well, when it was shrunk down, it pulled down a Chuchu, who, because of Link's current size, seemed to be the size of a small building. Scaling to real size, assuming the Chuchu had a density similar to Jell-O, this behemoth would weigh 44,131 pounds, or 22 tons. However, the suction can be protected against with magic. But even more powerful are the Magnetic Gloves. These magical gloves allow Link to attract and repel huge amounts of metal, literally tossing giant iron balls that would weigh over 100 tons across the room in two seconds. And it doesn't just affect magnetic metals - somehow, even the likes of aluminum and other non-magnetic metals fall prey to its manipulation. But Link's most well-known of these kinds of items is, without doubt, the Ocarina of Time. By playing this magical Ocarina, Link can control the weather, change the time of day, heal injured souls, create statues, and make inanimate objects come to life. And, in some situations, he can even go back in time! However, he loses any and all weapons except his basic ones by doing this, and can only go back three days, no more, no less, making it pretty much useless during battle.

 _Link stops in the middle of an enormous open field, and plays a tune on his Ocarina. Seconds later, a horse comes running up from the distance. Link turns to the horse and pets it on the nose, smiling._

" _Yeah, you remember that song, don't you, Epona?"_

Let's not forget about Link's magical weapons, shall we? Starting off with the Fire Rod. This magical rod is a powerful tool that can transform into a variety of different weapons that use fire and explosive energy in a series of deadly attacks. It can also manipulate magic itself into physical attacks that can blow foes back or cut them into sushi. It can create raging infernos around an enemy, summon fire dragons, and use the power of the Triforce of Courage in one ultimate attack to throw a giant fireball of ultimate death. It can also turn into multiple forms, like a flamethrower or an energy battleaxe. There's also the Ice Rod, which is stated to be the Fire Rod's equal, but with ice and frost instead of, you know, fire and death. The Cane of Byrna surrounds Link in a magical barrier that destroys everything that passes through it and the Magic Cape turns Link invisible and intangible, able to pass through any attacks or walls. Except dirt. For some reason. The Cane of Somaria creates giant blocks made out of pure magic that can only be moved by Link, Magic Powder can do pretty much everything Mystery Seeds can and more, and the Lens of Truth lets him see the world from a spiritual perspective. However, while these items are exceptionally powerful, they do require some amount of Link's limited magic pool to use. So it's a good thing Link also has five bottles filled with Blue Potion. Each bottle contains two servings, and each serving fully restores Link's health and magic.

As if he needed anything else, Link has a variety of Rings and Masks that alter his abilities significantly. He can only have one of each equipped at a time, but can switch between them in an instant, so it's not a major downside. The Whisp Ring prevents magical curses, burning, freezing, being turned to stone, basically status effects in general, the Green Holy Ring prevents any and all electrical damage, the Spin Ring doubles the length of Link's Spin Attack, the Heart Ring Lvl. 2 gives him a healing factor, and, best of all, the Red Ring doubles Link's strength and striking power. When it comes to masks, the Mask of Scents increases Link's senses to superhuman levels, the Mask of Truth lets him talk to animals and the undead, the Blast Mask acts like an infinitely exploding Bomb, the Bunny Hood doubles his speed, the Stone Mask makes him invisible to his foes unless he attacks, and the Giant's Mask only works in extreme cases, but increases his size to that of a mountain. But far beyond these are the Transformation Masks, masks that alter Link's physical form and transform him into something else. Deku Link can run on water, manipulate plant life, and spit sticky sap. Goron Link can lift extremely heavy objects, survive in all manners of heat and fire (including lava), and curl up into a ball to race around like Sonic. Zora Link uses two electric boomerang-like blades as weapons and can swim and breathe underwater like nobody's business. But Link's most powerful transformation is yet to come. Born of a fallen god from long ago, the Fierce Deity's Mask grants power absolute. Fierce Deity Link is leagues stronger and tougher than normal Link, and wields the double-helix sword, a blade so insanely powerful, it two-shotted the demon Majora, who can move a small moon. More notably, it did this:

 _Fierce Deity Link looks up at a meteor-sized moon with a demonic grin that's about to crash right into him. Calmly and quickly, Fierce Deity Link pulls out his blade, reaches up, extends the sword to an insane length, and slices down through the moon, carving it in half._

No, you aren't seeing things. That guy just split a moon in half! Let's do some math: Fierce Deity Link is about the same size as Ocarina of Time's Adult Link, who was 170 centimeters tall. By measuring the moon in comparison to this height and assuming an average moon-rock density throughout, the moon would be about 314.43 cubic meters big and weigh 2,266,762 pounds. Scaling to our moon, the force required to cut it in half would be over _one trillion joules_.

But Link's never needed the face of a god to be physically impressive. He's strong enough to knock a small tree down with one punch, fast enough to dodge sound-based attacks, and tough enough to be flung straight through the trunk of an oak tree and get right back up. While it only takes about 20,000 pounds of force to knock a tree down, to completely smash through its trunk with a single blow would take around 70,000 pounds of force! And he's right back up and fighting! But if he does need a boost, he's got that covered, too, because Link has boatloads of armors and accessories to wear just to make himself even tougher. The Lvl. 2 Power Bracelet makes him strong enough to lift giant statues, but doesn't increase striking power. The Golden Gauntlets are even better, letting him lift and throw a giant granite pillar that would weigh over 466,000 pounds, though they also don't increase striking power. Hence why they're eclipsed by the equally-strong Iron Gauntlets, which _do_ increase striking power, and can create and harness electricity to boot. He's worn many, _many_ different outfits and armors, but his best tends to be the Red Mail, a change of clothes that lets him survive in great heat and magically _quadruples_ his durability. With the Zora Flippers, he can breathe underwater and swim across tough currents with ease. Roc's Cape triples his jumping distance, lets him hover in mid-air, and increases his agility. The Water-Walking Boots let him walk across entire oceans without fear of sinking, but even better are the Pegasus Boots, which quadruples his speed, though he can have some amount of trouble using his non-sword weapons at these speeds. Add to that a magical Magnifying Lens that lets him understand all languages and see invisible things, and you have a very dangerous superhuman package. And unlike his normal weapons, he doesn't have to go searching inside a magical bag of infinite space for these - they can all be equipped at the same time (except the Water-Walking Boots and Pegasus Boots, obviously. It's one at a time for them).

Believe it or not, even without any of what we've already mentioned, Link still wouldn't be lost. Remember how I said the Triforce of Courage gives him magic? Well, I didn't just mean for his weapons. Yup, Link's a magician. Among his spells are Din's Fire, which can create explosions and fireballs, the Jump Spell, which doubles his jumping height, and the Life Spell, which sacrifices one-third of his current magic to replenish half his health. The Shield Spell doubles his durability for a surprisingly long time, Naryu's Love creates a force field against projectiles and heals him over time, and the Fairy Spell transforms him into…a fairy. A fairy that can fit through keyholes and has infinite flight. He can rapid-fire teleport with Farore's Wind and reflect other magic spells and weapons with the Reflect Spell. Finally, there's his most powerful spell, the Thunder Spell, which covers an enormous area, brings down magic barriers, and can incinerate over a hundred monsters at once - but it does use quite a bit of magic, far more than any of his other spells.

With how much power Link has, can you imagine what he'd be like if he didn't get the weakest third of the Triforce?

You aren't going to believe this.

After Ganon was defeated a few too many times for its liking and it got a taste of what Link had to offer, the Triforce of Power abandoned Ganon and chose Link as its bearer. Now the wielder of two/thirds of the Triforce, Link's power grew immensely. He was strong enough to effortlessly shatter steel and was so powerful, when he took his first steps, Zelda thought he was using the Thunder Spell. Just from walking! Having access to all the Triforce of Power's abilities, Link was basically impervious to damage and had unlimited magical power. He could've actually cast the Thunder Spell, which takes most of his magic, a thousand times with no drawbacks whatsoever. And his power over magic extended well past his own. When Ganon, who, remember, was the most powerful magic user on the planet, tried to kill him with the Death Curse, Link CAUGHT IT and transformed it into a caging curse, which he then used to trap Ganon. However, there was one major downside. Using the Triforce of Power made him…totally power-hungry and evil. And gain tusks. And, when he began misusing the Triforce of Power, the Triforce of Courage abandoned him. Upon realizing this, Link gave up the Triforce of Power, and it went back to Ganon. But, if he's desperate enough, he could always just call it back and once more gain all that power.

But even without that power, Link's accomplished some crazy things and defeated foes that should be way out of his league. This is, admittedly, likely due to his incredible strategic prowess and fighting style. Link is an expert at figuring out his opponent's patterns and exploiting them. Even if there's only one possible way to defeat his foe, he will find it and use it. It does take some amount of time, but this hasn't failed to defeat his enemies the vast majority of the time. To be fair, that in itself is probably because of his insane detective skills.

 _Link stabs behind him, impaling the darkness. The Nightmare cries out in pain._

" _Heh," Link breathes out. "So, what do you have to say? All I had to do was watch and figure out your style, and then I attacked your weak spot."_

He was once surprised by a moblin general with a magic spear, and figured out less than ten seconds later that the moblin was nearsighted. He then exploited this by making a dummy of himself out of sticks and weeds with a bomb as the head, and somehow timed the bomb's fuse to exactly go off when he predicted the moblin would pick it up. He deduced the location of the mystical Whistle in less than a day when the rest of the world couldn't do it in years, and, once, when Ganon teleported away from a fight, Link not only figured out that he'd gone to Death Mountain, but also the exact room he was in, just based off the direction Ganon was heading in when he teleported! Screw Batman, this guy's the _real_ world's best detective.

And his physical accomplishments are just as incredible. We're talking about a guy who, without any strength boosters, easily wields a giant iron ball and chain over half as big as he is and defeats Gorons that can lift over ten tons in a wrestling match. He once kept up with a galloping horse (which can move at speeds of 44 MPH) for several miles, and has been stated to run at over 30 MPH on multiple occasions. Even that's nothing to all the hundreds of times he's dodged magical lightning or dozens of lasers at once. He's effortlessly shoved a skeleton knight through a wall of solid concrete, shattered a giant palace door, and kicked a moblin so hard, it exploded. No joke. He easily survives falls from hundreds of feet, like, every day, and even took an explosion that sent him flying hundreds of miles away into a stone wall. He's equaled and even surpassed the strength of foes who can easily tear down metal doors, and you know how one of Link's bombs can break into the side of a mountain? Yeah, well, he can take a total of twenty of those same explosions without any armor. That kind of durability is just stupid. But not as stupid as some of the other things he's done.

 _Link emerges from another dungeon, battered but happy. He waves a conch shell at his fairy companion. "Yo! I'm back, Felicia!" He hands her the instrument and moves over to pet Bow-Wow. "Now, then, shall we take Bow-Wow home?"_

 _Felicia looks at him quizzically. "Link, did you have fun?"_

 _Link puts his newly-acquired Bombs in his magic bag. "Yeah, I had tons of fun! Why do you care?"_

" _I mean," Felicia elaborated, "while you were fighting the enemies, weren't you afraid of dying with each step you took?"_

 _Link grins. "Die? Who?"_

Link's defeated entire armies by himself. In a single fight, he fought and killed forty Vires, twenty Wall Masters, nine Wizzrobes, and fifty Lanmolas. Just killing a single one of any of these monsters would be impressive for a knight of Hyrule, and Link took them all on at once after wandering the desert for days! He one-shotted a dragon a hundred times his size, defeated Hyrule's greatest swordsman with nothing but a wooden practice sword - _when he was eight years old_ , bested the strongest man in the world, and held off over two hundred monsters for three days. He's bested Ganondorf in combat over a dozen times, and outright killed him three times. And remember the demon Majora, who was powerful enough to move a small moon with little effort? Well, even without his Fierce Deity form, Link still killed him. Her. It. Whatever it was. Link's shoved a five-ton boulder out of the way without any form of strain, survived a mountain exploding on top of him, and, when a cyclops twice his size threw a lit grenade at him at superhuman speeds, Link caught the grenade mid-air and threw it back twice as fast - right down the cyclops' throat. This kid's defeated hundreds of absurdly powerful monsters, most of which were considered impossible to defeat. He's even beaten his more powerful evil self, Dark Link, several times! Oh, and you know Soulcaliber's Nightmare, right? The superhuman demonic warrior who absorbs souls, controls some aspects of reality, and effortlessly destroys entire armies? Well, unfortunately for him, he was dimension-hopping one day, and decided to invade Hyrule. Link…beat him. After Nightmare barely escaped with his life, Link gave chase to the Soulcaliber dimension, and eventually defeated Nightmare again. When an uber-powerful soul-devouring demon is afraid of you, you know you're pretty strong. But Link's not just powerful; he's got determination to match. One time, he was stranded on an island, and decided his best bet to get home was to build a raft and sail away. So he spent all day building a giant sailing raft, intending to set sail the next morning. But a village was attacked in the middle of the night, so Link went out to save them. He met with and battled against an army of monsters all night long. When he was done, you think he'd save the trip for another time, right? Nope. Without any food, water, or rest, after fighting for his life all night long, Link finished the raft, set sail, and sailed _a circle around the entire planet_ , ending up exactly where he started. And he paddled most of the way because he was faster than the wind! How is this guy real? But even that pales in comparison to the time he fought and defeated True Vaati, who was a far superior version of a far superior version of a far superior version of a far superior version of a magician who was already powerful enough to obliterate an entire acre of forest with nothing but a whisper. Well, with the amount of times Link's killed the essence of all evil, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

But while Link may be the essence of heroism, that doesn't make him faultless. While his deduction and strategic prowess is incredible, he's…lacking when it comes to common sense or communication skills. He's sort of immature, and will often go out of his way to settle a small score - like the time he made a bet with his childhood friend Rasuka about who could kill more monsters in one dungeon - a bet that nearly got the both of them killed. And while his strategy never fails to find a pattern, it does sometimes fail in finding one in time for Link to use it. Figuring out his opponent's moves and attack tendencies takes time, so if his foe can get his hits in quickly enough, Link doesn't get the chance, leaving him at a major disadvantage. He also tends to charge in recklessly, ignoring his surroundings and losing track of all information except about his opponent. Once, when he met a giant evil pig man, he charged in while the two were still talking, hoping that he was quick enough to destroy his enemy before he could react. And he was. He reached his foe and took a mighty swing - having completely forgotten that his sword had broken earlier due to stress and was now simply a hilt without a blade. Needless to say, he lost that bout. Also, he falls into traps way too frequently. He must consciously activate his Z-Targeting ability, so it's pretty common for a monster to hide out and get the jump on him. Plus, he's not invincible; in one timeline, Ganon even killed him and achieved ultimate power, but another Link rose up to stop him many years later.

And that's the truth of Link. He learns from any mistakes he commits and comes back better than ever. With a big arsenal and a bigger spirit, there are few who would dare try to put their blade to the test against the Hero of Hyrule.

 _As Stalfos run amok through Hyrule Castle Town, soldiers fall everywhere. One of the knights stands against the Stalfos King's blade, pushing with all his might. "Think I'll let any of you monsters do as you please?!"_

 _The Stalfos King shoves him off and, with a slice, cuts his way through the soldier's armor. He raises a finishing blow and declares "Now, then. Hurry and go to hell." He launches his jagged sword downward to cleave the soldier in two._

 _Only for the blow to be intercepted by the blade of a young man garbed in green._

 _Link turns his sword, showcasing the mark of the Triforce, stares his foe dead in the eye, and declares "The only ones going to hell…are you." He slides out from under the blade and, with a single slash, disintegrates two Stalfos._

 _The Stalfos King backs up. "That sword is…the Master Sword! Then…you're the Hero of Time?!"_

 _Link snorts. "You again, huh?"_

"' _Again'? Who are you?!" the monarch's eyes widen in shock as he remembers. "It can't be! From seven years ago…that little brat who opposed me?"_

 _Link nods regally. "Right. Back then, I couldn't get any hits in. But now…I'm not a powerless kid anymore."_

 _The Stalfos King swings his sword with full strength. "You impudent little-"_

 _Link sidesteps out of the way and slices his undead foe in half with a single swipe._

 **Link:**

Name: Link (last name varies)

Species: Hylian

Age: Typically 17

Height: Typically 5'7" / 170 cm.

Weight: 155 lb / 70 kilograms

Occupation: Royal Knight

Ate 17 plates of food in one sitting

Has never actually kissed Zelda…ever

Honorary member of eight different races

 **Triforce of Courage:**

Superhuman Awareness

Morality Discernment

Magic Pool

Magical Protection

Unrelenting courage

 **Triforce of Power:**

Impervious to Damage

Unlimited Magical Control

Even Further Physical Abilities

Immortality

Evilness

 **Weapons/Armor/Items:**

Biggoron's Sword

Great Fairy's Sword

Phantom Sword

Master Sword/Golden Sword

Four Sword

Sacred Bow

Nice Bow

Crossbow

Blue Arrows

Fire Arrows

Ice Arrows

Silver Arrows

Bomb Arrows

Light Arrows

Red Darknut Arrow

Braced Shield

Fortified Shield

Goddess Shield

Hylian Shield

Mirror Shield

Normal Bombs

Remote Bombs

Bombchu

Nice Bomb

Hyper Slingshot

Deku Nuts

Ember Seeds

Pegasus Seeds

Gale Seeds

Mystery Seeds

Scent Seeds

Power Bracelet Lvl 2

Golden Gauntlets

Iron Gauntlets

Mole Mitts

Mogma Mitts

Fireshield Earrings

Hero's Charm

Blue Tunic

Red Tunic

Magic Armor

Pegasus Boots

Water-Walking Boots

Roc's Cape

Zora Flippers

Deku Leaf

Magnetism Gloves

Long Hook

Double Clawshots

Gust Jar

Cane of Pacci

Magic Boomerang

Gale Boomerang

Ball & Chain

Bug Net

Beetle

Skull Hammer

5 Bottles Filled with Blue Potion

Gnat Hat

Ocarina of Time

~Song of Storms

~Song of Healing

~Sun's Song

~Zelda's Lullaby

~So many others

Sand Wand

Stop Watch

Blue Ring

Fire Rod

Ice Rod

Magic Powder

Cane of Byrna

Cane of Somaria

Magic Cape

Lens of Truth

Red Ring

Heart Ring L-2

Green Holy Ring

Whisp Ring

Spin Ring

Blast Mask

Stone Mask

Bunny Hood

Giant's Mask

Mask of Scents

Mask of Truth

Deku Mask

Goron Mask

Zora Mask

Fierce Deity's Mask

So many others. It would take days. DAYS

 **Spells:**

Fairy Spell

Din's Fire

Reflect Spell

Shield Spell

Thunder Spell

Jump Spell

Nayru's Love

Farore's Wind

Life Spell

Spell Spell

 **Physical Abilities:**

Superhuman…oh, EVERYTHING

Z-Targeting

 **Feats:**

Jumped over twenty feet into the air

In a single battle, defeated 40 Vires, 20 Wall Master, 9 Wizzrobes, 50 Lanmolas at once.

Killed King Stalfos with a single swipe from the Master Sword.

Beheaded Volvagia with one chop from the Master Sword.

One-shotted a dragon over a hundred times his size

Defeated Soulcaliber's Nightmare - twice

Held back an entire army on multiple occasions

Defeated Vaati's true form, which was an upgrade of an upgrade of an upgrade of an upgrade of a guy who was already powerful enough the shatter the Picori blade with one blast and destroy an acre of forest with just a whisper

Dueled Fi to a draw before gaining the power of the Triforce while using only a normal sword

Bested the strongest man in Hyrule in strength

Wrestles Gorons, who can tote over 10 tons

Ate no less than nineteen plates of food in one sitting

Fought an army of powerful monsters all night long…slayed ALL of them.

Sailed in a circle around the world without resting AFTER staying up all night fighting powerful monsters.

Knocked down a small tree with a punch

Matched strength against creatures that can tear down metal doors

Effortlessly lifted a moblin twice his size

Kicked a building-sized moblin so hard, it exploded

Shoved a five-ton boulder out of the way

Easily shattered a wooden door in the grand palace

Smashed a skeleton twice his size through a brick wall.

Able to keep up with a galloping

Easily dodges multiple arrows and spears and magic attacks

Ogre threw a grenade at him; Link caught it mid-air and threw it back into the ogre's mouth

Dodged lightning attacks and Beamos lasers several times

Speed shocked Agahnim, who can dodge lightning

Able to take 20 explosions that can break into the side of a mountain w/o armor

Was hit through a tree's trunk and got back up right away

Was shot out of a cannon into a stone wall from hundreds of feet away – was fine

Hit with an explosion that sent him into a stone wall miles away – was fine

Easily survives falls of hundreds of feet

Survived being in the center of a mountain-leveling explosion

Discovered the Whistle in one day

So much other stuff. No joke, he almost has as many feats as Superman

 **Weaknesses:**

Not undefeatable

If caught by surprise, can be overwhelmed quickly

Tends to charge in recklessly

Not the best memory

…

 **Terrarian:**

Years ago, the land of Terraria was a peaceful place. But then the legendary Cthulhu died on its soil, and his darkness spread out and took the form of hundreds of thousands of monsters. To combat this darkness and protect the land they'd created, the gods created a being made to be the ultimate hero in every regard. And they called him…Terrarian.

Yup.

That's it.

After Link's stupidly overcomplicated origin story, I bet you weren't expecting that, huh? Well, regardless, Terrarian quickly learned how to tame the land he'd been born into. He could dig, build, and fight like nobody else. And he did those very things for over a year, along the way killing monsters and mining for all kinds of trinkets and materials to upgrade his weapons and searching for treasure - which he seems to be obsessed with in a rather un-heroic kind of way.

 _Hearing an explosion underground where his friends had gone, Terrarian jumps up in worry. "The treasure!"_

 _He pauses and then amends the statement. "I mean…my team. Yeeeaah."_

Thanks to his natural talents, ever-increasing arsenal, and superhuman abilities (including infinite stamina and a healing factor that brings him from near-death to fully restored in just a few hours), he became nigh-unstoppable. It didn't matter who or what you were - an ancient god, a skeletal guardian, or two full armies from the frozen north - all of them tried to defeat him, and they all died. And he took their stuff.

 _Seeing a skeleton holding a key and a bag down in the depths of a cave, Terrarian grins. "Woah-oh! Free stuff!" He grabs the items from the skeleton and acknowledges him. "Heh, sorry buddy. Doesn't look like you'll need these now."_

With his tendency to loot the corpses of his enemies and natural ability to make new weapons, Terrarian became pretty good at using pretty much anything. By the end of his journey, he'd wielded well over four hundred different weapons! However, he can only carry so many weapons and items at once (not counting armor and accessories), so we're only giving him the best he has.

His favorite and most common weapons are his swords. He's not fiction's best swordsman, but he's still seriously good, and loves to take a heroic blade into battle. He's used dozens of these, but we're just going with his top three, the first being the Influx Waver, a powerful sword that can shoot an even more powerful sword beam. The beam can travel up to 11,000 feet away, moves at 58 MPH, and can teleport up to three times, striking his target several times with every swing. How strong is this weapon? Well, the Destroyer is a creature made from an alloy not dissimilar to steel, and a weapon has to have a damage of over 21 to _slightly_ injure it. The Influx Waver has an attack power of 110, making it theoretically able to injure something five times tougher than steel - and that teleporting beam is just as strong as the sword itself! More powerful still is the Star Wrath, a sword exactly as strong as the Influx Waver that causes star-shaped bursts of energy to fall from the heavens with every swing. Three beams fall per swing, which creates a lot more than you think, since Terraian can swing this sword three times a second! And each projectile hits with twice the force of the Star Wrath itself, resulting in a total damage level of about 1200 per second. That's insane!

" _Hey!" Terrarian declares to the Demolitionist in an angry tone. "For your information, I'm an amazing sword…person…swordsman!"_

But his most powerful sword, and possibly weapon, is the Meowmere. This sword is one of many weapons that can only be obtained from looting the corpse of Cthulhu's brother, the Moon Lord, who's powerful enough to easily move a small moon. This pink-and white blade can be swung nearly four times per second, has a base damage of 200 (nearly twice that of the other swords) and shoots out…um, rainbow cats. These "cat beams" travel at 68 MPH, can bounce five times, pierce through multiple enemies, and deal 244 damage with every hit. That makes the total DPS around 1500. Recall that 21 damage was enough to injure steel. Yup, this weapon is crazy overpowered.

But when his swords aren't handy, Terrarian has no problems doling out damage with his many, _many_ other weapons. Since he likes to use his swords when he's up-close, he mainly sticks to his two best long-range weapons when his enemies are out of slashing distance. The first of these is the Pulse Bow, an incredibly powerful bow that, likely through some kind of magic, directly affects the arrows he puts into it. When he shoots any kind of arrow from this bow, it shines, ricochets off walls, and flies for 960 feet totally unaffected by gravity! Of course, he's had dozens of different arrow types of varying power, but what are generally considered his most powerful are the Luminite Arrows, which, after being fired, move at the speed of sound. Combined with this bow, a single shot deals 80 damage, and the Pulse Bow can shoot down his enemies incredibly fast. He's even able to draw, string his bow, load an arrow, and shoot and kill an enemy five times in less than two seconds! Best of all, he has almost _two thousand_ Luminite Arrows to use with this thing - though they are useless if the bow breaks. Still, his best, and favorite, long-range weapon has to be the S.D.M.G. This dolphin-shaped machine gun can shoot twelve bullets a second and clears out hordes of monsters like little else. It may not make its ammo defy gravity, but it can still shoot as far as the Pulse Bow at a much faster rate, and while it, too, has almost two thousand sonic-speed Luminite Bullets, it comes with a magical enhancement that, 50% of the time, prevents the gun from consuming ammo, making its supply closer to three thousand. And, with the Luminite Bullets, it deals 99 damage with every shot. That's a DPS of almost 1200 - the same as the Star Wrath, and from a lot further away.

But it's not like those are his only weapons beyond stabbing distance. The Daybreak is a javelin that…throws other javelins, each made of hardened light and capable of piercing just about anything. These javelins will, after having impaled an object or foe, stick inside of it for some minutes, doling out 25 damage every quarter of a second. Up to eight javelins can pierce the same object at once before one must vanish, but for most monsters, that's _way_ more than necessary. He also has five Light Discs that are basically boomerangs on steroids. They reach 40 feet away before instantly returning to Terrarian's hand, are completely indestructable, and deal 57 damage with each hit. More interesting, though, is that these discs can endlessly bounce off of pretty much any object, akin to Captain America's shield, ricocheting between a few targets, knocking down several enemies and then returning right to Terrarian's hand again. And he can throw all five at once in a huge light show of death and destruction. Almost as much destruction as his explosives! Terrarian's used plenty of explosives, but his most-used ones while battling are Dynamite, a powerful explosive that destroys any dirt, stone, sometimes even metal in a 14-foot radius, and deals 250 damage. He also has a few varieties of these explosives, like the Sticky Dynamite, which sticks to things, and the Bouncy Dynamite, which bounces. He holds thirty of each of these, but he holds almost a thousand Land Mines, which also create powerful, 250 damage explosions, but must be stepped on. But his most powerful explosive is the Holy Hand Grenade. When this golden piece of heaven explodes, everything else dies. It deals more than twice the damage and destroys twice the land as normal Dynamite, and lets it all go with a shout of "Hallelujah!" No, I'm not joking. However, he only has five of these grenades, and they all take…really long to blow up. As in… a full seven seconds _after_ landing. The guy would have time to literally pick it up and toss it right back at its thrower, so Terrarian has to be careful when he uses it. Also, he kinda has to get out of the way well before it goes off, because a single Holy Hand Grenade will blow Terrarian into a thousand pieces splattered across whatever field he's in.

And while you've seen some of Terrarian's crazy side in the weapons already, you have no idea how crazy it gets with the full picture. One of this guy's most powerful weapons is…a yo-yo. But it's a super powerful yo-yo that can go through walls, reach fifty feet away, and summon dozens of homing projectiles to bore into the toughest monsters. This little thing is so awesome, Terrarian even named it after himself! The Terrarian Yo-Yo is the strongest yo-yo he's ever wielded by far, burning straight through metal, and deals 190 damage with every hit. He also wields a Luminite Hamaxe, which he uses for things like making firewood, fixing stairs, and utterly destroying everyone who gets in his way with a damage number of 60 with every swing. You know, normal things. The Vampire Knives may seem weak, but they deliver a surprisingly powerful punch when used effectively. These infinitely respawning knives drain away the life of their victims and restore some of it to Terrarian. He can throw up to eight at once, they ignore gravity, reach 108 feet away before dissipating, and each one deals 38 damage. With a Pickaxe made of Luminite, he can tunnel through virtually any material like it's thin air, including things like Iron, Tungsten, Steel, and even Lihzahrd, a mystical material that's harder and tougher than diamond. Speaking of Lihzahrd, he also has 999 Lihzahrd Blocks that he can build all kinds of barriers with.

The Cell Phone will magically imprint all kinds of information into Terrarian's vision, showing him the current weather, phase of the moon, his elevation level, distance from landmarks, the nearest valuable treasure, any dangerous creatures around the area, the time of day, the total number of approaching enemies, and all kinds of other things. Oh, and, if he's in a pinch, he can use it to teleport to his house. But that's not his only method of teleportation. With the Rod of Discord, Terrarian can teleport anywhere within a two hundred foot radius, though using it more than once every six minutes will shave off a seventh of Terrarian's health. Hence why he typically relies on the Portal Gun instead. Straight out of the classic Valve game, this gun can shoot portals. Well, beams that turn into portals when they hit a solid surface, whether it be a mountain or a moon. Entering one portal will end up with you exiting through the other, making it extremely useful for Terrarian to use when moving around the world, though it can only shoot two connecting portals and can't go through walls, people, or…well, any solids. For exploration purposes, he carries torches with him at all times - the brightest of all are White Torches, of which he carries nearly a thousand. And, finally, he carries a large pouch of Purification Powder on him - a magical powder that does magical things, mostly banishing evil and restoring lost souls.

Far more powerful than any of this, however, is the Stardust Dragon Staff. Using this staff will summon a dragon made of…er, stardust. This dragon is exceptionally powerful, capable of tearing through entire armies and disintegrating everything. It burns and destroys all enemies in Terrarian's way, but, lucky for it, the dragon exists on an astral plane, so, despite being able to still hurt and kill enemies, it can do things like go through walls, see invisible things, and can't be harmed by any normal weapon. Even the powers of gods don't typically affect this thing. And, with the assistance of some magical accessories, its length extends to sixteen feet (its upper limit is far higher, but requires massive magical assistance that we couldn't provide Terrarian with while still giving him his best equipment). The one downside is that, well, Terrarian can't actually control the dragon. It's its own being, and while magically created specifically to protect him, it will sometimes go after enemies far, far away, ignoring an entire horde that's right next to him. Also, it does cost a small amount of mana to summon - we'll get into that later.

Hence why he sometimes relies on other summons. The Rainbow Crystal Staff uses some mana to summon an airborne crystal that, although stationary, pretty much demolishes anything that gets within range, shooting out a light beam at any foes within 120 feet that creates an explosion after a small delay. Any enemies caught in said explosion take 150 damage - which makes destroying entire battalions of evildoers a cinch. Perhaps an even more powerful sentry can be summoned through the Lunar Portal Staff. This staff creates an astral portal that continuously fires a laser beam at anything that gets within 120 feet of it. This beam is surprisingly deadly, dealing a DPS of over 2000 sometimes. However, both the explosions and the beams can be avoided by fast enough enemies - but it doesn't really matter, because, as long as he has the mana, Terrarian can just keep respawning these sentries over and over, essentially teleporting each one to wherever he wants.

But his most powerful non-traditional weapon or item has to be the Solar Eruption. Part sword, part spear, part whip, and part flail, this weapon imbued with the power of the sun is all awesome. Think of it like Ivy Valentine's Snake Sword, but way deadlier and way cooler. While the Solar Eruption can be used like a normal sword (albeit an exceptionally powerful one), should Terrarian want a little more reach and a lot more destruction, it transforms into a giant sword-whip held by retracting chains. This slices right through enemies, burns down everything it touches, creates explosions, and can reach nearly sixty feet away and still be fully usable, returning back to sword form in an instant. Oh, and it goes through walls! At full power, this weapon can cut just about anything down to size instantly, and holds a DPS of up to 2500, thanks to the burning, the explosions, the piercing and the normal weapon itself.

 _Terrarian impales the Destroyer through the mouth with the Solar Eruption and, with a decisive slice, tears the metal beast apart instantly._

Let's not forget his many potions, each of which provides different long-lasting buffs that assist him when fighting. When he consumes the Endurance Potion, all damage taken is reduced by 10% for four hours. The Magic Power Potion lasts two hours and increases all magic damage by 20%. With the Night Owl Potion he can see in the dark for four hours and the Invisibility Potion turns him invisible for two. More useful for combat is the Inferno Potion, which, for four hours, creates a magical ring of astral fire around him, causing anything touching it to be set on fire. He also has a variety of Flasks, potions that imbue his weapons with the ability to inflict certain debuffs on his opponents. Poison, Paralysis, the works. The most powerful of these is the Flask of Cursed Flames, which causes any enemy damaged by his weapons to be enveloped in flames that not even water can put out for several minutes. And, with a combination of Dangersense, Hunter, and Spelunker Potions, Terrarian pretty much gains omniscience of the area around him - he's able to see and sense any traps, enemies, potential help, treasure, or, well, anything, within a few hundred feet. And every one of these potions lasts for hours and ALL his potions come in stacks of at least thirty. And, of course, he can activate all the potions at once if he wishes, providing a myriad of buffs.

Believe it or not, we still aren't done with this guy's weapons and items. Located on his body are several pieces of equipment that have…different uses, and he also keeps a place for each of them. He has a Light Pet that he summons with a Suspicious Looking Tentacle (yes, that's really what it's called). This pet is basically a giant eyeball that glows bright enough to light up the darkest of caverns, but can't actually hurt or even touch anything. If he happens to run into some minecart tracks, he can summon a Mechanical Cart, which can reach speeds of 102 MPH, but only move on said tracks. His primary tool for exploration, though, is the Static Hook, a grappling hook that reaches 80 feet away, latches onto any solid surface, and defies gravity. With this hook, Terrarian can retract and adjust the line however he wishes, choosing exactly how far up or down he wants to be from the latched point with no application to the laws of physics. He can even latch onto a different point in mid-air and won't fall while doing so! His best mount is, um, controversial, but I think it's pretty obvious that it's the Cosmic Car Key in a battle situation. This key summons a UFO for Terrarian to ride around on. Said UFO can fly and hover indefinitely and reach speeds of up to 45 MPH, 58 if he's moving diagonally. Oh, and, of course, he can use weapons inside of it.

And none of this even touches his magic weapons! Well, it kind of does - some of the weapons and items listed use a little mana initially, but these are the ones it was really meant for. The Rainbow Gun is a gun that shoots…rainbows. These rainbows do, in fact, have physical presence, and everything that crosses through them will take about 225 damage every second. While this rainbow has an extensive reach, Terrarian can only shoot one at a time - attempting to shoot another will cause the first to evaporate. Better than that is the Lunar Flare, a weapon that summons three powerful turquoise projectiles from the sky with every use. These projectiles explode upon impact, can be summoned pretty much from anywhere (passing through all solids in order to reach that place), and each deal 100 damage. And he can use it a bunch of times super quickly to pierce through everything. But his best magic-based weapon is the Last Prism. This triangle of death fires several light-based beams that converge into one insanely powerful beam. When it's all added together, this weapon could potentially dole out a DPS of 3600 - well above anything any of his other weapons can do.

The downside to these weapons is that they all (and some others we've listed) draw from his limited pool of mana to use. If he runs out of mana, he can no longer use said items - and while it does regenerate over time, it's at an incredibly slow rate. This is particularly bad news due to just how much mana Terrarian tends to use - both the Last Prism and Lunar Flare will use up all his mana in under three seconds, hence why he has 75 Super Mana Potions at the ready, with each one completely refilling his mana (though using them too frequently will lower the damage of his magic weapons). Matching this are his Super Healing Potions. He has 30 of these and each refills almost half his total health - though he has to wait nearly a full hour between uses, which means he has to be careful with how much damage he takes.

Thankfully, he can be a little less careful than he might otherwise thanks to his armor. Like his weapons, Terrarian has used dozens, if not hundreds, of different armors over the years, but he has four that are above all others, each dramatically increasing his abilities in one area. However, he only has room for two (and that's only thanks to vanity slots), and can only ever have one equipped at a time, so we'll take his two most recognized ones: the Solar Flare Armor, which prioritizes melee damage, and the Nebula Armor, which prioritizes magic damage. Starting with the Solar Flare Armor, this armor made of hardened fire boasts a Defense of 78, which means it reduces all attacks by 59 points of damage. It also naturally comes with several other buffs, including a 15% overall speed increase and 22% boost in strength. Equipping the full set grants an extra ability, too: if Terrarian's able to avoid taking any damage for five minutes, he gains one charge of a Solar Blaze bubble around him. After this, the next damage he takes is reduced by an extra 30% and creates a giant explosion! He can stack up to three charges at once, and even use up one in a short-range "dash" ability, which sends Terrarian flying at an enemy moving at 58 MPH and creates an explosion surrounding the enemy. Unfortunately, being a giant pillar of flame, this suit makes him kinda the most obvious thing in the world. No way he's hiding in it, and all enemies are further attracted towards him. Still, the benefits far, far outweigh any downside. On the magic side of things, we have the Nebula Armor, which holds a defense of 46, which means all attacks are reduced by 35 damage. This armor increases his magic pool's size by 30%, grants a 26% magic damage increase, and a 10% increase in speed. This armor's special ability is a bit…strange. After attacking an enemy, there's a chance a booster item will appear, and picking it up will grant Terrarian an 8-minute stackable buff. The Damage Booster increases his strength by 15% per buff, the Life Booster increases the rate of his healing factor, and the Mana Booster does the same for his mana regeneration.

But armor isn't all he wears to enhance his prowess. He also has several accessories that provide a variety of effects - though he can only hold twelve and only six can be active at once. Let's start off what we're giving him with perhaps the most important of all: the Solar Wings. With these wings, Terrarian can fly at speeds of at least 30 MPH, reach heights of 334 feet, and it allows him flight for a full three minutes. And while he does have to touch down after three minutes of flying, he can jump up and take flight once again instantly for another three minutes. Besides this, he has the Ankh Shield. While he doesn't use it in combat, this shield is exceptionally helpful because it's enchanted to ward off many different kinds of debuffs, included being frozen, burned, poisoned, confused, stunned, and even internal bleeding. Oh, and it also reduces knockback. The Celestial Shell increases all his stats by 10%, and can transform him. At night, he becomes a werewolf, stronger, faster, and deadlier than a normal terrarian, with superhuman senses as a bonus, and, when entering water, he becomes a merfolk, with proficient swimming capabilities and the ability to breathe underwater.

The Frostspark Boots increase his top speed to 34 MPH, up from 15 MPH, lets him hover in mid-air for a few seconds, and increases his mobility on ice. The Frozen Turtle Shell reduces all the damage he takes by 25% after he reaches half-health, the Sniper Scope allows him 10% more damage and the ability to see 10% farther while wielding ranged weapons, the Tiger Climbing Claws gives him the ability to latch onto, slide down, and climb up walls, and the Architect Gizmo Pack increases his building prowess to incredible levels. The Yo-Yo Bag adds a ghostly second Yo-Yo to the Terrarian Yo-Yo along with a counterweight and increases its range by 10 feet, the Papyrus Scarab makes the Stardust Dragon even longer and deadlier and increases the power of his sentries, the Bee Cloak unleashes angry bees and falling stars whenever he's attacked, and the Gravity Globe lets him reverse his own personal gravity, falling up instead of down, though he can't use it in mid-air. Finally, the Mana Flower allows constant use of magic weapons and abilities by automatically injecting Super Mana Potions into Terrarian as he needs them, so until he runs out of potions, he never needs to stop and refuel (though the damage decrease still applies).

HOLY CRAP, that's a lot of stuff. And with that, Terrarian's done some absolutely crazy things. But even without it, he's still strong enough to easily wield a giant hammer that would weigh over a ton, fast enough to dodge godly blows of magic lightning and dozens of lasers, and, with a life total of 500 Health plus armor, he's tough enough to take the explosion of two of his own Dynamite sticks and live. He can even run around and fight monsters effortlessly while wearing a full set of platinum armor, which would weigh over 3,000 pounds. However, as you may remember, his foes are typically…much, much stronger. How does he beat them? Well, Terrarian figured out from the start the strategy to defeating any physically superior foe. He's the epitome of a hit-and-run fighter, deciphering his opponent's patterns and going in when they take a breather, getting a few hits in and then retreating, dodging and avoiding all possible attacks until he gets another opportunity. Sure, it takes a while, but thanks to his infinite stamina, while his foe will eventually tire, Terrarian never will. He'll keep on the fight for hours if it means victory - and it does. Nobody has ever been able to take this guy down - and not for lack of trying.

 _With a final blow from the Terrarian's sword, the Moon Lord falls. It screams in agony as its essence is ripped apart and it vanishes forever. Instantly afterward, the Terrarian grabs the bag of treasure it leaves behind and wanders off, whistling._

Thanks to his fighting style and the nature of his world, Terrarian is theoretically capable of defeating any superior foe - a feat he's proved many times. He killed the Eater of Worlds, a giant corrupted worm monster who can destroy a whole town, with nothing but a copper shortsword - the absolute weakest weapon on the entire planet. Even a wooden practice sword is considered leagues better than that piece of junk. But Terrarian prevailed nonetheless. Even that's nothing to when he fought the Dungeon Guardian, a being literally made by the gods to be undefeatable. Since none of his weapons could do more than a single point of damage to it, he had to have hit the creature nearly twenty thousand times in order to do him in! And, when he did upgrade to a wooden practice sword, he fought off over a hundred demonic eye monsters on his way to a treasure. If that's what he can do with his weakest items, just imagine the overpowered things he can do with all the stuff we've given him - like killing the Destroyer, an all-metal and far, far more dangerous version of the Eater of Worlds with over ten times the durability and several times the strength, in under a minute. Or easily defeating Plantera, a giant jungle plant monster who was capable of uprooting an entire forest. Or invading a sacred temple filled with superhuman lizard people and killing the guy they called god. The guy's fought off several armies, all the uber-powerful monsters spawned during a Solar Eclipse, and held off an alien invasion - all on his own! After digging his way to hell, killing hundreds of demons and battling a giant wall that was basically Satan, he unleashed the incredibly powerful and deadly land known as the Hallow - and then he tamed it. He also fought and killed a magician with the powers of four other exceptionally powerful magicians alongside his own - and the death of this guy caused four pillars filled with very dangerous monsters to spawn. So he went out and destroyed them all and all their minions, who were far superior to any small monsters he'd faced till then! As penance for his actions, the Moon Lord, brother of Cthulhu and mover of the moon, came down to teach him a lesson and…well, you already know how that fight ends, don't you? But, finally, after killing dozens of bosses, fighting several armies, tearing up the entire world and rebuilding it, invading hell itself and the places it spawned, and killing a god, Terrarian, and the whole of the land of Terraria, was finally at peace.

But it had its fair share of struggles getting there, in part because of Terrarian. He's not the brightest tool in the shed, and usually has to rely on others to develop a strategy if his hit-and-run style isn't working. He only _thinks_ he's an incredible swordsman, being, in reality, only very good. It's just that he's better than anyone else in the world he comes from. This also has lead to fair amount of overconfidence, which is very dangerous due to his low life total. If he rushes into a fight unprepared or is unexpectedly cornered, it's bye-bye Terrarian. It doesn't help that he takes so long when fighting his enemies. Sure, he _has_ fought off powerful monsters in very short periods of time - when he had help.

" _You defeated that creature in a very small amount of time," the Old Man informs the group of heroes seated in front of him. "But you only defeated it because you all worked together."_

By himself, unless he completely outclasses the monster, he can take several hours to finish a fight. No to mention how exploitable his fighting style actually is - he's just lucky nobody's caught onto it yet. Also, because of how he fights, anyone with a healing factor that can't be worn down pretty much gets an instant win.

But nobody has yet. No matter the challenge, no matter the opponent, Terrarian has fought them and come out on top. If you wish to challenge this epitome of heroism, prepare for a slow, but certain, death.

" _Uh-huh, okay, so let's see what we've got here." Terrarian opens his inventory and begins shuffling items around. "Put this there, grab a couple of those, put them over there, slot that over there, and we are swimming in awesome!"_

 _A dark purple armor with an unnaturally powerful glow begins growing around Terrarian, forming itself around him until he's fully equipped._

 _Terrarian looks at his arm and grins. "Oh, yeah." He was ready to fight anything that stood in his way._

 **Terrarian:**

Name: Alistair, the Terrarian

Species: Terrarian

Age: 1-2

Height: 6' / 183 cm.

Weight: 160 lb / 73 kilograms

Occupation: King of the Slimes

May be illiterate

Loves treasure

Wielded 471 different weapons

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Strength

Infinite Stamina

Healing Factor

 **Weapons/Armor/Items:**

Influx Waver

Star Wrath

Meowmere

Pulse Bow

S.D.M.G.

Luminite Arrows

Luminite Bullets

Daybreak

Light Discs

Dynamite

Sticky Dynamite

Bouncy Dynamite

Land Mines

Holy Hand Grenades

The Terrarian

Luminite Hamaxe

Vampire Knives

Luminite Pickaxe

Lihzarhd Blocks

Cell Phone

Rod of Discord

Portal Gun

White Torches

Purification Powder

Stardust Dragon Staff

Rainbow Crystal Staff

Lunar Portal Staff

Solar Eruption

Super Mana Potions

Super Healing Potions

Endurance Potions

Magic Power Potions

Night Owl Potions

Inferno Potions

Dangersense Potions

Spelunker Potions

Hunter Potions

Flasks of…many things

Suspicious Looking Tentacle

Mechanical Cart

Static Hook

Cosmic Car Key

Rainbow Gun

Lunar Flare

Last Prism

Nebula Armor

Solar Flare Armor

Solar Wings

Ankh Shield

Celestial Shell

Frostspark Boots

Frozen Turtle Shell

Sniper Scope

Tiger Climbing Claws

Architect Gizmo Pack

Yo-Yo Bag

Papyrus Scarab

Bee Cloak

Gravity Globe

Mana Flower

So much more, w/safes & piggy banks, over 2000 weapons and items

 **Feats:**

Used a hammer weighing 1.3 tons

Dodges lightning and lasers

Survives sticks of dynamite and lasers and stuff to the face

No effect from 3,000 lb Platinum Armor

Never defeated

Killed King Slime w/ Copper Shortsword

Killed Eater of Worlds w/ Copper Shortsword

Killed Eye of Cthulhu w/ Copper Shortsword

Killed Brain of Cthulhu w/ Copper Shortsword

Killed Dungeon Guardian w/ Wooden Bow

Killed The Destroyer in less than one minute

Killed Plantera in less than ten minutes

Killed the Golem, (an ancient god)

Killed Duke Fishron

Killed Wall of Flesh (basically Satan)

Killed Skeletron (another ancient god)

Killed Skeletron Prime (a better robot of an ancient god)

Killed The Twins

Killed Lunar Cultists

Killed Lunatic Cultist

Killed everything in all four Lunar Pillars

Killed the Moon Lord (ultimate ancient god's brother), who could move a small moon

Killed off an entire Goblin Army by himself

Killed off an entire Solar Eclipse Event by himself

Killed off an entire Pumpkin Moon Event by himself

Killed off an entire Frost Moon Event by himself

Killed off an entire Blood Moon Event by himself

Killed off an entire Pirate Invasion by himself

Killed off an entire Sandstorm Event by himself

Killed off an entire Alien Invasion by himself

Killed off an entire Dungeon Defenders Army by himself

Killed off an entire army of evil snowmen by himself

Killed a lot, and I mean a lot, of other things

Tamed every evil and/or hostile world

Dug his way to hell, killed everything there

Over time, dug up and destroyed the entire planet

 **Weaknesses:**

Overconfident

Fights take forever

Exploitable fighting style

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all! It's time for a Death Battle!

…

"He's already killed the Moon Lord!" Din hissed. "And he's planning to travel to our dimension soon. If he gets his hands on the Triforce-"

"Patience, sister," Nayru declared. "Many have tried to claim the holy relic before. None have succeeded."

"Except Ganon. And Aghanhim. And Belloram. And Vaati. And-"

"I think Din's right," Farore decided. "Well, in some way. This guy is dangerous, and it's not like he's peaceful to others. He was made to tame planets, after all."

"So we must kill him now!" Din continued.

Farore backpedaled quickly. "Woah, I didn't say that! Maybe give him a nice talking to?"

Din shook her head. "Sister, I still wonder if I find your naivety revolting or endearing."

Nayru sighed. "The elder gods of that world no longer have a use for him. It…is logical."

Din nodded. "Glad you finally see reason." She looked at Farore. "Sister?"

Farore looked between the two other goddesses nervously. "Well-"

"Young Farore," Nayru interrupted. "He is your chosen hero, You need not send him on this mission if you do not wish it."

"No," Farore spoke slowly. "It's all right. That's what heroes do - they stop those that have gone too far…or eventually will."

Nayru nodded. "We'll contact him now."

…

Weeks later, it was an early morning without even sunrise yet in the world of Terraria, and one fire-clad hero was sneaking out of town. He'd nearly gotten away with it when he heard a voice.

"You didn't really think you'd be able to hide in that thing, did you?"

Terrarian turned to the Dryad speaking. She was sitting on a fencepost, wearing a green dress, quietly eating an apple. "Calista."

"Alistair," she declared in a mockingly deep voice. She laughed lightly. "You look like a walking, talking firecracker!"

"It strikes fear into the hearts of my enemies!" Terrarian protested. "And my name is Terrarian now. You know, chosen-"

"-savior of the world, created by the gods, yadda yadda yadda." She smiled. "After our adventures, you're always be Ali."

He took a seat next to her. "It's been a while since those days. Remember when we fought the Eater of Worlds together?"

"The giant worm? Of course I do!" She shook her head. "That feels like so long ago…"

"It's only been a year. Probably less," Terrarian replied. He smiled wistfully. "We've come a long way since then."

" _You've_ come a long way," Calista corrected. "Look at you! You've defeated sorcerers, gods, and cancer! That oughta be something to be proud of. All I've done is…well, a lot of nothing."

"You've become happier. More carefree." Terrarian noted.

The dryad stared at her apple core. "Seems kind of an empty victory."

"Being happy with who you are is more important than almost anything else," Terrarian reminded her. "I'm…afraid I've become even harder than I was."

"Please," Calista scoffed. "You were the king of emo back in the day. You're so much better." She paused as the sun began to come up. "Tell you what. When you get back from…whatever you're doing, let's sit here again and talk some more. Only this time…" her eyes glinted. "There will be _sake_."

"I thought your kind didn't drink."

She winked. "Do we have a deal?"

Terrarian laughed - the first real laugh he'd had in a long time. "I'll be there." He stood up. "But until then, I have somewhere else to be."

Calista rubbed her fingers over the apple's core, and suddenly, it started to grow back. Within ten seconds it was a fully ripe apple again. She handed it to Terrarian. "Here. For luck."

Terrarian turned towards the wilderness. "Thank you." He closed his eyes. "I mean that."

…

Link appeared in the middle of nowhere. Well, that wasn't exactly true. He was in the middle of the woods, and he had no idea where in those woods he was, how big the woods were, or where the woods were located. All he knew was the goddesses needed him in the world. He had to find a man called "Terrarian" - a threat to Hyrule, and a man who had already killed gods. He was supposed to find this man - and end him. It wasn't a pretty mission - but if it was for the protection of his country and his land, he'd do it.

Oh, luck was on his side. Here came a warrior tromping through the woods right now. He was quite large, being even taller than Link, and appeared to be wearing armor made of hardened fire. That…was a scary thought. He waved at him. "Excuse me, prin- er, sir. I'm Link, Hero of Hyrule, and do you know where I can find the Terrarian?"

The man paused. "Almost anyone here could be considered a terrarian."

"Yeah, well, the one I'm looking for has killed a god or two."

The man nodded. "That would be me."

Link blinked. "Wait, really?"

"Yep."

"Huh. Well, this is awkward. See, uh, I'm…kinda here to kill you."

"Oh, is that all?" Terrarian seemed to wave the notion off. "Happens every day. Go ahead and try. But I'm warning you - if you fight me now, I'll see this through until the very end."

Link unsheathed his Golden Sword as his tunic's color changed from green to red. "Wouldn't have it any other way."

 **-FIGHT!-**

Link swung and unleashed three sword beams at Terrarian, who quickly dodged to the left of all of them as a gray-ish sword formed in his hand. He jumped and took a stabbing blow that glanced off of Link's Mirror Shield.

Terrarian backed up. "Huh. Most of the time, those shields break."

"You'll find I'm full of surprises," Link replied, and charged forward.

"Yeah, me too." Terrarian swung his Influx Waver again, this time to shoot out a sword-shaped beam. Link shoved his Mirror Shield forward to reflect it, but it vanished before it hit the shield.

"Wha-"

It suddenly appeared again behind Link and stabbed into his side. Link gasped in surprise and the beam teleported again, this time stabbing his forearm, then again in his leg. He finally realized what was happening and swung his sword around to catch the ghostly blade - but it no longer existed. Link's ears picked up a shuffle of feet and whirled around, barely in time to block the Influx Waver from piercing his skull.

"You made a mistake bringing the fight close," Link declared, and, swung the Golden Sword down to cut right through Terrarian.

Who easily dodged to the side before Link had time to see him.

Link blinked and swung several more times, his arm moving faster than the eye could see - but each and every blow was narrowly dodged and countered by Terrarian. His steps were smooth, but precise, and he seemed able to find the small spaces in between the lightning-fast strikes in order to not be hit. Link performed a Spin Attack, but Terrarian jumped over it beautifully. Terrarian finally swung again, matching the Golden Sword once, and then ducked down, rematerialized the Influx Waver in his other hand, and stabbed Link in the side.

Link kicked him away and backflipped out of danger. He equipped the Heart Ring and pulled out the Nice Bow. Terrarian was fast, but dodging nine arrows a second ought to be difficult even for him. Link began shooting away. Terrarian cut down several arrows with the Influx Waver and blocked the strays with a quick wall of Lihzarhd. Link fired another three-pack of arrows, these with blue tips. Terrarian paid no attention and swung to cut them down as well, but his sword and the hand carrying it were quickly frozen in a block of ice. Immediately, Terrarian switched out his Bee Cloak for the Ankh Shield, and the ice began melting. It hadn't even been a full second, however, when Link shot it with an explosive arrow, which shattered the ice and the Influx Waver with it. Link kept shooting, arrow after arrow, fire, ice, all kinds of arrows were being fired and dodged.

"Okay, that's enough," Terrarian decided. A translucent bubble built around him, and he rammed forward at more than twice his normal speed. The arrows bounced off of his dashing form and he rammed into Link, creating an explosion that knocked Link back several feet.

Link stopped, cast the Shield Spell, and drank half a Blue Potion, healing every wound and replenishing every bit of magic from the fight thus far. "Neat trick. I've got a better one." He placed a mask over his face and, with a shout, changed forms completely, becoming far larger, bulkier and…made of rock? Goron Link curled into a spiked ball and rammed forward.

Terrarian materialized his Hamaxe in his right hand and waited for a second as Goron Link drew closer, then delivered a powerful upswing, knocking Goron Link up in the air. A giant jump and another swing later, and he was sent zooming away into the distance. Terrarian waved the Rod of Discord and appeared next to Goron Link, who had fallen miles away into a river. Without hesitation, he dove in, the Celestial Shell shifting his body into that of a Merfolk. He swam through the water as easily as he walked on land, and summoned the Star Wrath to cut into Link. But Link was a fast thinker. He had barely touched the water's surface before equipping the Zora mask, and now he flipped around, breathing easily, and met the Star Wrath with his own boomerangs. He shoved Terrarian back and threw the boomerangs at him. Terrarian instantly threw out all five Light Discs, two of which matched Zora Link's boomerangs, and the others struck Zora Link, forcing him back as he grabbed his chest in pain. Zora Link grabbed his boomerangs and slashed forward with them, but Terrarian just swam backwards and sliced forward several times with the Star Wrath. Zora Link blocked each slice with ease, then dug one of his blades into the river's bottom, using the current's movement to propel himself forward, the momentum of which tore the boomerang free and sent it forward with Link's arm, several times faster than he would have otherwise gone. The blade pierced right through the mermaid-like Terrarian's armor and into his body. Surprisingly, this seemed to injure Terrarian greatly, as blood spilled out quickly and easily before suddenly stopping.

So, he could deliver the pain, but he couldn't take it.

Terrarian grimaced. Even as a merfolk, he didn't have his full agility underwater. It was hard to avoid these attacks. Zora Link flipped around instantly and slashed twice more with both blades, cutting further into the surprised Terrarian, who shouted in pain. He needed to hold out. What was taking those falling stars so long?

He had no sooner thought this than a group of star-shaped projectiles pierced the water and exploded on top of Link. Link shouted, jumped out of the water, and dove onto solid ground. Terrarian jumped out after him, transforming to his normal state. Link threw out both boomerangs, but on land it was easy for Terrarian to dodge them. He jumped into the air and rolled between the flying blades, delivering a huge smash into Link with the Star Wrath – only for Link to remove the Zora mask and block the blow with the Mirror Shield. Not to be deterred, Terrarian swung again and again, dozens of times striking the shield, before the same amount of projectiles fell from the clouds. Link, however, simply cast another spell, and they were all repelled.

Link backed up. "This has been fun, but I get the feeling you're not going all out."

Terrarian shrugged. "No, not really. Do you want me to?"

Link grinned. "If you will, I will."

"Sounds fair." Terrarian jumped into the air and, in a display of glorious light, giant fiery wings appeared on his back. He dove down at superhuman speeds and plunged his sword into a surprised Link's shoulder. He dropped a dynamite stick, switched to his Light Discs, flew up, and threw all five at angles, forcing them to bounce and hit Link in several spots right before the dynamite exploded, sending Link flying into the air and smashing him right into the falling star, which sent him down with another powerful explosion. To top it all off, he flew downwards, blade sticking out, intending to end it all off with a final impale.

But Link reached up with a metal-clad hand and grasped the Star Wrath as it dropped. He drank up another half of a blue potion and stared at Terrarian. "My turn." He kicked up with his left leg, knocking Terrarian back, and punched forward with a stream of electricity, which quickly shocked Terrarian and forced him to drop from the sky. In a second, Link was on top of him, performing a flurry of incredibly powerful punches – all of which hit absolutely nothing. Link gasped as he felt a sword pierce his side and turned to see Terrarian calmly drinking a heath potion. Link instantly launched a punch, but Terrarian scooted to the left of it. He went in with a right hook, but Terrarian fell to the down and rolled away. A earthquake punch, and Terrarian jumped into the sky and fell down, smashing Link's Mirror Shield with another slice. A quick one-two combo was deftly dodged, and an uppercut was blocked by the blade of the Star Wrath. Two stars fell from the sky, and Link jumped out of the way before they could hit him. He pulled out a massive Ball & Chain and, with minimal effort, hurled it at Terrarian. Unfazed, Terrarian brought out his own legendary yo-yo and, as the mace-head fell over him, threw it upwards. The impact from the Terrarian Yo-Yo, plus the many lasers and ghostly second one, reversed the spiked ball's momentum, send it flying back at Link. Link caught it with one gauntlet, threw it to the ground and then began spinning. After gaining plenty of his own momentum, he flung it out again – and the Terrarian Yo-Yo matched it exactly. The two traded yo-yos for a bit before Terrarian suddenly charged through with a shield bash, knocking down Link and striking at him with the yo-yo. The Mirror Shield blocked the main one, but the secondary yo-yo caught him in the cheek and sent him reeling with a burning sensation.

Link backed away. "Got any more tricks?"

"Maybe a few," Terrarian replied. He held up a staff – and a monstrous dragon made of blue flames emerged from it.

"Cool," Link declared, nodding. "I've got one of those, too." He held out his Flame Rod and a monstrous dragon made of orange flames emerged from it. The two beasts collided in mid-air and began to fight as Link and Terrarian continued their bout. Link exchanged his gauntlets for the Skull Hammer, which matched the Hamaxe for a bit before Terrarian put up a wall of unbreakable Lihzarhd. Link cast the Jump spell and jumped over it, but Terrarian instantly used his pickaxe to dig far underground. Not letting him escape this fight, Link activated the Quake Medallion, causing what he assumed were massive cave-ins and the whole earth to shake below him. Terrarian dug his way back to the surface right away and began launching Daybreaks at Link. Link blocked three with his Mirror Shield before one cut his cheek. He grabbed it as it passed him and hurled it back, but, of course, Terrarian was too quick for it to have any real effect.

"You know what? I'm done here." Link pulled out the Golden Sword and activated the Ether Medallion, the frost disintegrating his fire dragon and freezing Terrarian's Solar Wings. Link was mildly surprised when it didn't do the same to the Stardust Dragon, but one Blue Potion and a sword beam later, and it was gone, too. He pointed the blade at the now-grounded Terrarian. "You want me to go all out? Here you go." He pulled out the Fierce Deity's Mask and put it on. Suddenly, there was another soul inside him. It felt…foreign. Powerful. Unrelenting. It was taking over his whole body – transforming it, making it stronger and deadlier.

Fierce Deity Link had arrived.

"Wow," Terrarian muttered sarcastically, "I've never seen something like that before."

Fierce Deity Link pulled out his double-helix sword. "You may have overwhelmed the spirit who previously used this body…but you will find me a far more difficult host to defeat. For I am a god, and you are merely a man."

Terrarian pulled out the S.D.M.G. "Said it yourself, freak. I've killed gods before." He unleashed a massive load of Luminite Bullets, moving faster than the eye could track, all aimed at Fierce Deity Link. But Fierce Deity Link just swung his Helix Sword once, creating a massive airwave that knocked every bullet from the air.

Terrarian blinked. "Okay, you're strong. But are you fast-"

"Yes," interrupted Fierce Deity Link from behind him.

The only thing that saved Terrarian was his built-up shield. The moment the Helix Sword made contact with it, an explosion was set off, halting the blow just long enough for Terrarian to duck his head. Terrarian used his static hook to pull his out of the way instantly and onto his previously-built wall of Lihzarhd. He materialized the Portal Gun in his hands, shot a portal onto the wall below him and another one right below Fierce Deity Link, intending for him to fall through, come out right below him, and get stabbed in the face. Instead, though, Fierce Deity Link just ran forward at incredible speeds towards Terrarian, the portal opening way too late. Terrarian tried to shoot him down with the S.D.M.G., but he was just too fast, dodging every bullet that came his way as if he could see them coming. As Fierce Deity Link finally closed the distance, Terrarian jumped out of the way of the massive sword he was swinging. It stuck the wall of Lihzarhd full force – and slice right through it.

Terrarian gasped. Okay, that thing was way stronger than he'd thought it was. One hit form it and he was dead. He materialized the Daybreak and threw spears at the ground, hoping to guide this fellow to a point where he could be trapped, but instead he simply walked through the light spears, each one snapping as he did. Terrarian shot out the Static Hook to escape, but Fierce Deity Link grew his sword to a size long enough to reach it and sliced right through the hook. Terrarian backed up and materialized the Star Wrath. As Fierce Deity Link approached and swung, he used the blade to skim off of his, which, in turn, gave him the momentum to scoot away. But for as fast as he was, it seemed Fierce Deity Link was faster. He suddenly appeared, right in front of him.

"Can't let you escape that easily. You insulted me."

"I didn't say anything about you!" Terrarian swung at him.

Fierce Deity Link caught the Star Wrath with one hand and batted away the falling star with the back of his other. "These pathetic attacks are insult enough." He squeezed hard and the Star Wrath shattered under his grasp. He kicked the shocked Terrarian once and sent him flying dozens of feet away. "You're outmatched." He raised his sword to the sky, and it grew. It grew taller than the trees, taller than the mountains, taller than the clouds. He took the handle with both hands and readied the final blow. "As you can see, I've been holding back. No more. This ends, here and now."

Terrarian woozily got up and chuckled.

Fierce Deity Link swung.

"Neat speech," declared Terrarian. "But what you haven't realized is…"

He looked up at the sword parting the clouds, on its way to pulverize him.

"I've been holding back, too."

Terrarian summoned the Meowmere.

The Helix Sword fell.

And it was blocked.

Terrarian used the Rod of Discord to teleport above the giant sword and to Fierce Deity Link, where he delivered an abundance of slashes that impaled him in several places, which, in turn, released cat beams that also impaled him in several places. Terrarian changed into the Nebula Armor to enhance his magic and instantly set up the Rainbow Crystal and Lunar Portal, both of which rained upon Fierce Deity Link with insanely powerful lasers. Fierce deity Link hopped out of the way, shrank his sword, and sliced right through both sentries. That didn't deter Terrarian, though, who flew into the air and shot a Rainbow Blast right at him. Fierce Deity Link was pierced by it and shouted in pain before deflecting it with his sword. Terrarian summoned his UFO with the Cosmic Car Key and, flying around fast enough to not be hit by the enraged god, used the Lunar Flare to rain more and more pain from the sky. He was losing incredible amounts of mana, but with his Mana Flower active, it didn't matter much to him. He just needed an opening, and…there.

Terrarian rammed downward at nearly 60 MPH and struck Fierce Deity Link with a face full of Purification Powder.

The Fierce Deity howled as the restoration-based powder drove his soul out of Link's body. Mere moments later, the original Link remained, head throbbing, sneezing, and very much confused.

"Wha-"

Link deflected a strike from the Meowmere with is Mirror Shield along with the incoming cat beam. "How did this happen?!"

"It just so happens I'm a priest in my spare time. Banishing evil spirits is good exercise."

"Well," Link replied angrily. "Don't think you've made this easier on yourself. He was strong, but I'm strategic. Also," he stated as he put away the Golden Sword and pulled out the Four Sword, "I have a lot more tools."

There was a flash and there were suddenly four multicolored Links standing there. They all spoke simultaneously. "You couldn't defeat one of me. How about-"

Terrarian jumped out of the UFO, kicked the Four Sword out of the Green Link's hand, stuck over two dozen sticks of sticky dynamite to it, threw it into the air, and hit it with a seven-second blast from the Last Prism.

The sword fell to the ground, very charred and very damaged, and Terrarian obliterated it with a swipe form the Meowmere.

All the other Links vanished as Green Link just stared, openmouthed.

"Sorry," Terrarian replied, shrugging. "I've just had enough of this fight."

Link brought out his bow and subtly nocked a Light Arrow. "Me too." He raised and fired.

There was no way Terrarian, who wasn't expecting this, could dodge the arrow. But he didn't need to, because it passed right through him and did absolutely nothing.

"Huh," Link stuttered.

Terrarian blinked. "Well, I'm not complaining" He materialized the S.D.M.G. and shot out a few hundred more bullets. This Link wasn't as fast as the last one. He probably couldn't dodge them all.

Link saw the bullets coming and immediately equipped the Magnetism Glove. He threw his hand forward and every bullet was repelled instantly. He pulled the S.D.M.G. away from the Terrarian and sliced through it with one swing of the Golden Sword. He drank another Blue Potion. "What else have you got?"

"This," replied Terrarian. He equipped the Solar Eruption and sent it flying, whip form, at Link, who tried to control it with Magnetism glove, but it wasn't working. Link teleported out of the way and cast Din's Fire to incinerate the sword, but it absorbed the fire and moved on. Link blocked it with his Mirror Shield, but all Terrarian had to do was jerk it once, and it flung upwards over the shield and unleashed an explosion. Link was knocked back and the whip impaled his chest. Terrarian pulled back, causing the Solar Eruption to retreat and pull Link towards him. Link quickly shot out a Clawshot, grasping the top of a tree and pulling himself over there. Terrarian took the opportunity to ingest all of his potions. Link tried to shoot him down, but he was faster, stronger, and very much omniscient. He dodged every arrow effortlessly – even the Light Arrows, since he knew exactly where they were and where they would be. He flew down at Link and used the Solar Eruption to unleash a variety of attacks, completely overwhelming Link with the snake sword until he was cut all over and gasping for breath. Link pulled out a Blue Potion, but Terrarian sliced right through it before he could drink. Link teleported to the ground and pulled out another, but Terrarian could tell exactly where he'd gone and was there, breaking it, a second later. Another second, and Link was completely wrapped in the flame-wreathed sword.

"What was that about this not being easy?" He stepped closer. "You really have no idea who you're dealing with, do you?"

Link teleported out of the sword's hold, clipped Terrarian in the head, forcing the blade to retreat into sword form once more, and held the Golden Sword to his throat. "I've dealt with so many like you."

"I doubt that," Terrarian replied, and extended the Solar Eruption again, impaling Link through the stomach and forcing him back. Terrarian fluffed his robes once and retreated the sword. "Well, that was that." He turned around, but his potion forced him to notice the slight movement of Link's hand. He turned back. "Still alive, huh? That must suck. Let's see what you were trying to grab." He grasped Link's hand and pulled it up. Link's sleeves fell down, revealing the Triforce on his wrist.

Terrarian fell back slightly. "The…Triforce? I thought…it was just a legend." He stuttered a bit. "So…s-so that's how you're bael to hang on for so long. You come from Hyrule, right? So that's where the wish-granting relic is hiding. I know a guy – I might be able to get there. One last big score – the whole universe." He grinned. "That's not such a bad way to end a career, is it?"

Link breathed out and got onto his knees. "You…aren't…touching that thing! You…you don't deserve-"

"I've found a lot of things I didn't deserve. Didn't stop me from taking them. You're not going to be stopping me, anyway."

"No…" Link gasped. He closed his eyes. He felt…something. A surge of power. Of life. Of energy.

Of greed.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

A golden triangle appeared out of nowhere and entered into Link's soul. His eyes turned red and he grew massive tusks. "YOU CAN"T HAVE WHAT'S MINE!"

Terrarian turned and saw the bloodlusted, Triforce of Power-filled Link. "Oh. Uh-oh." He threw the Solar Eruption forward.

It bounced off of Link's energy shield and fell to the ground. Link grabbed it, feeling no pain whatsoever, and, with one inhale, drained it of its magic, transforming it into just a normal sword.

Terrarian flew up into the sky and summoned the UFO again. He held out the Lunar Flare, and hundreds of shards fell towards Link. But Link just waved his hand and took complete and total control over the magical projectiles. He shot them at the UFO, ripping and tearing through it at multiple points.

Ooh, there was some fire magic in that engine. Link snapped his fingers and the whole thing went out in a fiery explosion of death. Terrarian barely got out of it in time.

"You think you're powerful?!" Terrarian shouted. "THIS IS POWER!" He equipped the Last Prism and shot out a full-powered blast.

But Link just blocked it with one hand.

Terrarian poured more mana into the beam, and it went bigger, stronger, faster. But Link just blocked it with the one hand held out in fornt of him. Link suddenly jumped up, high into the air, and sntched the Prism out of his hands.

"A quaint little relic," he mused. "But no match for the Triforce of Power." He squeezed his hand, and the Prism shattered, then, under Link's command, recollected itself into a ball of pure destructive magic. He hurled it at Terrarian who desperately dove out of the way. The ball went far past him – and then there was the sound of a massive explosion.

Link sighed. "Oh, dear, did I hit the moon?" He snapped his fingers and the day turned to night, revealing moon shards scattered among the stars. "Whoops." He snapped his fingers again, turning the night to day. "Well, that's going to be annoying for whoever's left on this planet when I'm finished." He stepped forward and the skies filled with lightning. Terrarian was knocked from the sky and plummeted to the earth. Another stomp, and an earthquake broke out, shattering the ground around them and leveling the nearby mountains. Upon Link's command, the missing ground shifted into sand and reformed itself under their feet. "Do you understand the extent of my power now? Do you understand how hopeless this is?"

"What I understand," replied, Meowmere materializing in his hand, "is that you're even less fit for that power than I am."

Link's eyes narrowed. "So be it. I think I'll finish you off in style. Have you ever been stopped in time before?"

Terrarian rushed forward.

Link pulled out the Phantom Sword. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience." He activated the sword's powers, and…

Nothing happened.

Link glanced at the sword. "Strange, that usually works." He blocked the incoming blow from Terrarian.

"What usually works?"

"This sword. It stops time. But it's not working."

"Really? That's too bad for you, becau-"

Link snapped his fingers and Terrarian was turned into a stone statue of himself. "Well, at least that's over." He glanced around – and spotted the Triforce of Courage lying on the ground. So that's why the Phantom Sword wasn't working. "Well, who needs you?!" Link shouted. He snapped his fingers again, opening a portal to the eternal void, and tossed the Phantom Sword into it. The portal closed right after. "I'm powerful enough without you! I'll destroy this puny world! No! I'll make it better! Because it will be all about me! We'll have fairs, and festivals, and parties, and…well, those are all kind of the same thing. Well, I'll think of something."

"Like this?" the suddenly-very-not-made-of-stone Terrarian replied form behind him. Link whirled around – and inhaled another faceful of Purification Powder. He screamed. The malice, greeed, anger – the power, it left his body, just like the evil spirit from before. Again, all that was left was normal old Link. The Triforce of Courage instantly jumped back into him.

"I'm not playing around this time, Terrarian announced. He stabbed Link through the chest once more – no, twice more. No, three times. Four, five six. That should do it.

Link gasped, bleeding everywhere. Terrarian prepared a final slice to the head when Link raised his hand and vanished.

…

Link spilled out onto a large rock in a cave. He gasped for breath. Had he…really just taken the Triforce of Power back? He hadn't meant to. Or had he? Did the goddesses intend for him to take the Triforce, or was it all his own doing? Regardless, he'd caused quite a bit of damage with that form - both to Terrarian and himself. Oh, and, apparently, he'd blown up a moon. That wasn't going to be good for this place. Thankfully, somehow, Terrarian had managed to knock the Triforce out of him. He was comfortable with his own third of the relic. He counted his Potions – only one left. He needed some of it now, but better not use the other half unless it was emergency. He took off the Heart Ring and replaced it with the Red Ring. One hit. Maybe two. That's all he would need. He dug through his knapsack and pulled out a stopwatch. That guy was fast, but he probably couldn't move when time was stopped. He stood all the way up and accidentally hit his head on a stalactite. He dropped the watch and grabbed his head in surprise and slight pain. A blink later, and the pain was gone. He grabbed the stopwatch from the ground and got right to work on it – never noticing the spring that had popped out when it fell.

Terrarian, meanwhile, had an idea. That much was rare enough, but far better was that it was a good idea. As he planted his Land Mines, he hummed to himself. He'd have to sacrifice both of his armor sets for it to work, but it almost guaranteed victory. He just needed to hold out.

…

"Well, look who decided to show his face again," Terrarian announced.

"At least I'm willing to do that much," Link challenged. "Take off that helmet. Let's see the real you."

Terrarian was actually surprised. He had been looking for an excuse to get out of this armor so he wouldn't trip the magic-bound Land Mines without it seeming suspicious. Now this guy had given him a perfect opportunity.

"I'll do you one better," he announced. A wave of his hand, and his armor vanished, appearing strewn around the ground surrounding him. For the first time, the two were completely face-to-face.

Link leaned back. "I've seen that look before."

"The look of a warrior?"

"Of a killer. Of someone who solves all his problems by destroying them."

"Okay, I get that you were all possessed and stuff, but you were seriously about to do that same thing to be, like three times in the last half an hour! Besides, how, exactly, did you get your title, Hero of Hyrule?"

"I've made some tough calls in my life. And, yeah, I kill – occasionally, even others like me. But I do it for the greater good. When the world is plagued with darkness, someone needs to be there-"

Terrarian interrupted him with a spray of Vampire Knives. Three struck Link, forcing him slightly back. "I get sick of talking. Especially to someone who wants to kill me." He threw out several more, but Link was faster this time and blocked each one with the Mirror Shield.

"See, now, that shield is going to be a problem," Terrarian declared. He threw out all five of his Light Discs at Link and Link easily blocked each one with his shield, bouncing them back to Terrarian's hand. Terrarian moved forward and threw them all again. Link stepped backwards subconsciously and blocked them again. They continued a few more times before Terrarian threw the Light Discs and, hidden in the bundle, a Holy Hand Grenade. Link bounced them all away, but was surprised when one didn't go back to Terrarian's hand. With a second glance, he instantly realized it was a grenade, and instinctively kicked it at Terrarian before diving out of the way. For his part, Terrarian hit it with a Light Disc, sending it falling towards the ground once more before going off. The resulting explosion and shout of "Hallelujah!" sent both combatants reeling - but Terrarian, having expected it, composed himself first. He used the Frostpark Boots and streamed towards Link, closing the distance between the two almost instantly. A shove of the shoulder and Link was sent backwards into the sand. Link scooted back and held up his shield to prepare for another attack. Terrarian calmly and smoothly walked in a circle around Link, stepping on several mines, but, thanks to his magic, not triggering any of them. He suddenly threw out the Terrarian Yo-Yo. Link bounced it off the Mirror Shield and, this time, made sure to get the second one, too. Terrarian bounced the yo-yo forward a few times, releasing dozens of lasers, but the Mirror Shield was impenetrable. Link further utilized that impenetrability by catching the yo-yo's head under the shield. He grasped it and pulled on the string, pulling Terrarian towards him. Terrarian attempted to resist, but Link was stronger than he was. But Terrarian knew his yo-yos. He instantly spread his wings and took flight over Link's head. The string came with him and so did both the Terrarian Yo-Yo and the Mirror Shield attached to it. Link backed up in surprise. That was his big defensive tool - without it, he was far more vulnerable. He dug out the Sand Wand and stretched it upwards, sending the sand around him up to retrieve his shield. Terrarian deftly dodged the blasts of sand and, with his free hand, threw down a few Daybreaks at Link's feet. Link, as Terrarian expected, backed up without looking where he was going - and stepped right on top of a Land Mine. The explosion sent Link into the air and badly injured his legs. Link couldn't even process what had just happened entirely - all he knew was that there was searing pain, and he'd lost his grip on…something.

That "something" was the Sand Wand. As it was launched into the air, Terrarian dove down and nabbed it for himself. Link hit the ground and gasped. He tried to stand up, but his legs burned with incredible pain the moment he put any weight on them. Why had he picked this particular moment to not wear his Whisp Ring? That really could've helped him now. He looked up into the sky at Terrarian. He needed that Mirror Shield back. If he couldn't get up there, he'd just have to bring Terrarian down here. He pulled out the Gust Jar and began its suction. Terrarian was clearly affected, but he tried to resist it for some time. He nearly succeeded, but when Link forced him to lose his focus with a few hits from the Hyper Slingshot, he came crashing down. He got up instantly, shaking the dust off of him.

"You want your stuff?!" He shouted to Link. "You can have it!" He let go of everything he was holding and flew up over a hundred feet.

Link paused. "What's he thinking?"

Then he heard a slight ticking.

Link cast the Jump Spell and jumped out of the way just in time. Far under the sand, a Holy Hand Grenade had been unleashed. The sand became a whirlpool, and his Mirror Shield, Hyper Slingshot, and Sand Wand were all sucked down into the depths alongside the Terrarian Yo-Yo.

Terrarian cursed silently. Getting rid of that pesky shield had been the plan all along, but he didn't expect to lose one of his favorite weapons in the process. Well, it couldn't be helped now. It was time for the rest of the trap. He flew down at Link and began spinning the Meowmere, sending dozens at cat lasers at him. Link pulled out his Golden Sword and redirect as many as he could, but one hit his already-tender right leg. Link cried out in pain, and Terrarian quickly capitalized on this. He threw down several sticks of Dynamite, forcing Link to stay on the move. Link rolled out of the way right before each exploded in turn, but he was running out of energy - and Terrarian knew he didn't have much healing power left.

Terrarian threw out even more dynamite before Link stopped, turned, and suddenly cast the Thunder Spell. Instantly, all the Dynamite exploded mid-air, and Terrarian was sent down to the ground, smoking. Link was on him instantly, having equipped some kind of boots to make him far faster than- UH! Link had somehow gotten in a quick hit! How was that possible? He was much too fast to- URCH!

Link only hit Terrarian twice, but that was twice more than Terrarian wanted. He launched four more Daybreaks at the speeding Link, guiding him to the left, while Link continually lobbed bombs at him. Terrarian lobbed back. At one point, a Nice Bomb and Holy Hand Grenade collided and exploded mid-air. It didn't actually affect the fight, but it looked cool. But whether or not Link knew, it, Terrarian had the upper hand here. He had to carefully guide Link towards…there he was.

Link tripped over something very large and was sent sprawling onto the desert sand. As he stood, he stepped on one more Land Mine, which blew his boots off and sent him into incredible pain. He fell to his knees and breathed heavily for almost a minute. When he looked up, he could tell something was wrong - but it took him a moment to realize what it was. He was sinking.

Link instantly cast the Jump Spell again and started squirming his way out of there like crazy, but this wasn't like other quicksand. It was far stronger, and acted with…intent.

"Carefully placed explosives and Lihzarhd," Terrarian announced. "Sand is always shifting. I just had to figure out how to shift it in my favor. That hole you're in will never get deeper, but…" his voice grew more serious. "You will never escape."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Link shouted at him. He raised his left hand and tried to cast Farore's Wind…but nothing happened.

"Uh-uh, no teleporting," Terrarian declared. "Those sinkholes are lined with the remnants of my Nebula Armor, now sporting inverted stitching and an inside out scheme. Before, it enhanced magical power. Now, it stops it. You aren't getting out of there anytime soon."

Link inhaled sharply, then let out an intimidating laugh. "You're fast. You're tricky. But even you can't escape time." He pulled out his stopwatch, clicked the top – and nothing happened.

Terrarian blinked. "I mean, I guess not, but you're kind of-"

"No, that's…wrong! This should be working!" Link clicked it a few more times. He grimaced and looked at Terrarian sheepishly. "You see, it…um, stops time. But it's not working."

"Like the sword?"

"Yeah, like the sword."

Terrarian shrugged. "I guess today's not your day." The Pulse Bow appeared in his hands. "And a few arrows dipped in a Flask of Poison…" he shot several times and pierced four arrows in each of Link's legs. Link cried out in pain and tried all the harder to escape, but it just drove the arrows in deeper. "That was just to make sure you don't escape. The more those arrows move, the faster the poison travels through your blood." The Pulse Bow vanished and the Meowmere appeared instead. "Yeah, this is the end." He jumped and flew at Link.

Link fought back tears. The pain was horrible. The burns from those mines combined with the poisoned arrows and the grainy sand boring its way into his legs. He couldn't move - he couldn't do anything. If he stayed here, he'd die. He had to escape. Somehow, he needed to get out of this trap. He jumped and crossed his knees - but the arrows drove all the way through, hitting bone and causing Link to shout in pain. The tears did come now - flowing helplessly down his cheeks as he realized this was the end. There was no way out of this trap. Not this time. After this pain, death might even be welcome. He closed his eyes, and prepared himself.

But instead of seeing death in his mind, he saw a memory.

 _Link breathed in the fresh air of the meadow and laid back on the bright blue-and-white checkered picnic blanket. The birds sang happily and perched around him, but it didn't bother him. He liked their music. Sometimes, it even gave him an idea for a new song for his ocarina. Oh, that reminded him of something. He rolled over and faced Zelda, who was lying down next to him, blonde hair spread out in a very un-royal fashion and the world's purest smile on her face. He noticed she'd shoved the picnic basket to the side, probably because she didn't want to accidentally roll into it and spill everything out._

 _Link sat up. "Hey, Zel. I remembered a new song."_

 _Zelda's eyes fluttered open. "Remembered, as in, from your childhood, or from…?"_

" _Another me, yeah. I don't know why…but I think this one was important. More so than most others."_

 _She turned her gaze to him curiously. "What's it called?"_

" _I don't remember the name totally. Ballad…something…Fish."_

 _She blinked. "That's a stupid name."_

" _Well, it's not a stupid song."_

 _Her eyes glinted. "Prove it."_

 _He took out the Ocarina of Time and put it to his lips, and a melody began to pour out. It seemed to rock the very air itself, and carried the weight of many people. Many souls. Somebody somewhere had loved this song more than anybody had loved anything. In his heart, he knew that. He had a special connection to this song - he just wished he knew how or why. When he finished, he put the ocarina down and took off his hat. "I learned it from a girl named Maron."_

" _It's…beautiful." There was a moment of silence. "What happened to her?"_

" _I…don't know. I get the strangest feeling…that I left her somewhere I could never return to."_

 _That put a damper on the mood. There was silence for a full minute before Link broke it. "Look, Zel-"_

" _No, Link," Zelda declared. She bit her lip. "I know you have to go to that new world. I know you have a mission. I know you won't be back for a long time. It's just…hard."_

" _Yeah," his voice cracked. "I know."_

 _Zelda sat up and turned to face him. "Promise me, Link. Promise you'll come back. That one day, we'll have another picnic together, just like this one. Whatever it takes. Promise me."_

 _Link didn't know if he could promise such a thing. He might not even be allowed to by the goddesses. Maybe, like Maron, he'd never see Zelda again. At least, not this version. But, instead of any of that, somehow, what came out of his mouth was "Okay."_

 _Zelda unexpectedly grabbed him and hugged him, her face on his shoulder. "Thank you. Thank you."_

 _She never knew that he felt one of her tears hit his back._

Link shook his head. No. He wasn't dying here. He had to return - no matter what. And there was one way to do it. As Terrarian came flying at him, he pulled out one of his own weapons: the Golden Sword. He inhaled, trying to steady himself. This was going to be the worst experience of his life. But at least he wasn't going to die. He lowered the blade down to just below his kneecaps.

Terrarian was only a few feet away.

Swallowing his fear and nervousness, Link swung with all his power.

And he fell to the ground.

He screamed so loud, Terrarian covered his ears. His eyesight was hazy. Pain…his entire lower body was in pain. But he looked in front of him, and there was Terrarian, hovering over where he'd been standing, absolutely shocked. But while Link's legs had stayed in the sinkhole, the rest of him had escaped.

Blood…there was blood everywhere. It was gushing out from him, from where his legs had been seconds ago. The sand was as red as his tunic. It stained the sand as fast as it was absorbed into the sinkholes. There seemed to be no end to it - or the pain. Link was getting faint. He had to get to safety, quickly.

Terrarian stayed in the air for an extra few seconds. "You…you just…you cut your own legs off to escape death. That's the most hardcore thing I've ever seen! Too bad you're going to die anyway." He dove down.

Link raised his hand and cast Farore's Wind. He vanished from Terrarian's eyesight - and back into the cave.

…

This was bad.

Link drank up his last bit of Blue Potion. He coughed some up and his eyes grew watery - the pain was subsiding, but not without its final stabs. Ouch - poor choice of words.

Skin around his knees began to form. It grew around the point where he cut until it had completely healed over. Link would never walk again, but at least he wouldn't bleed to death. That's not to say he wouldn't die. He only had so long before Terrarian found this cave and him inside it. His bold move of cutting his own legs off wouldn't mean a thing if he didn't live through this, so he needed a strategy. That's what he was good at. Finding patterns and exploiting them.

"Okay, Link, think," he murmured to himself. Terrarian was fast and deadly with a sword - he'd love a close range fight, where he could get one powerful hit in and vanish. That's always what he did - stab and vanish, shoot and fly away, hit and run. With those stupid teleporting items he had plus his surprising speed, chances weren't good for Link to get in a proper killing blow. They were even worse now that he couldn't even walk. There was one good part - before, when he'd managed to get a few cuts in, Terrarian had needed a healing potion instantly. He was fast and hard to hit, but he wasn't durable. A couple of hits should be enough. "Maybe if I distracted him…" Link shook his head. He might be able to create a diversion with some explosives, and if he got his boomerang to come at a certain angle, Terrarian would be distracted for a split second - but those stupid potions were giving him superhuman senses. He'd sense Link way before a stab could be delivered. But they didn't seem to detect projectiles. He might get in a couple of arrows. But his Light Arrows didn't work on Terrarian for some reason, he couldn't hit him with the explosions from one of his Bomb Arrows in time, and his Silver Arrows did some damage - but he could just duck out after the first one, and his potions and healing factor would repair the wound over time. If Link wanted an effective arrow, he'd need to make one.

An idea formed.

Link spread out his remaining Silver and Explosive Arrows on the ground. Fifteen exploding and only eight silver ones - had he really used that much? Well, it should be enough. He pulled off the heads of each arrow and dumped out the explosive powder from his bomb arrows. He gathered all the powder in one neat pile, and placed the silver heads in another. He pulled out his Golden Sword and slowly, carefully, sliced each arrowhead into several pieces. He was done in a few minutes, having transformed the silver arrowheads into a pile of very sharp and very deadly scraps. He mixed the pile of scraps and the pile of powder, making sure the metal was even throughout, and stuffed the mixture down the shafts of the bomb arrows. He put in as much as he could in each arrow, stuffing them full - by the time he was done, he only had five filled arrows. Finally, to seal the deal, he fitted five of the spark-lighting arrowheads from the Bomb Arrows back on the shafts.

He now had five exceptionally deadly shrapnel arrows.

While he'd been working with his hands, he'd also been working with his head. He had a plan.

…

Terrarian stomped around the clearing, the thought of taking this time to strategize never even entering his head. He had to come out soon, right? Link had made it explicitly clear that they were to fight, so he wouldn't be gone forever. At some point he had to return-

He heard an explosion in the distance.

He grinned. "And there you are." He held out the Rod of Discord and teleported straight over to the explosion. He jumped and hovered with his wings as he peered around - and was almost hit by a ricocheting boomerang. He practically fell over backwards to dodge the thing, only to see some kind of arrow heading towards him. Oh, crap. He covered his face with his hands right before the arrow exploded. Shrapnel was sent everywhere, piercing his body in dozens of places. He gave out a cry of pain and fell to the ground - landing right on top of another shrapnel arrow. It exploded, coating his entire back in jagged pieces of metal. He was in horrible pain now, and flew up, wings struggling to lift him due to sheer pain. The boomerang had come flying back, and Terrarian immediately sent his Light Discs to knock it out of the sky…right before realizing it was carrying one of the new arrows. The Light Discs hit, and so did more metal. Seeing another falling from the sky headed for his forehead, he immediately summoned the Meowmere and hit it with a powerful swing - which caused it to explode all over his face. He was barely able to see out of one eye, but his potions did well - they forced him to notice Link behind him, ready to fire the last arrow. As he pulled back on the string, Terrarian created a wall of Lihzarhd Blocks in front of him so the arrow would hit them instead. But Link simply teleported past them and fired. The moment before the final arrow covered Terrarian in deadly shrapnel, Link teleported again, far behind Terrarian.

Terrarian twisted around and cried out in pain, shrapnel sticking out everywhere. He was bleeding all over the ground. He dropped to his knees. "Ah…hah. You're clever. Very resourceful. But you've underestimated me again." To Link's surprise, he lied down and rolled around, driving the shrapnel farther into his body, tearing through muscle, blood vessels, and bones. He got up and grit his teeth. His pain was…unbelievable. It was like his organs were on fire and someone was trying to put them out with wax-filled needles. He bit right through his bottom lip and screamed. But the shrapnel was inside his body - he'd survived. It'd been an hour - he'd be fine. A giant healing potion appeared in his hand and he drank it all up in one swallow. His blood cleared, his eyesight returned, his heart was beating, and his outer wounds, including his lip, were healed. He stood up, the pain having ceased. "You think you've won - but you didn't know something." He brought out his left arm and pointed to the small shield attached to his shoulder. "That shield prevents many things: stunning, poison, being turned to stone (that one was convenient a little while ago), being burned - and internal bleeding. So, as long as the shrapnel is inside my body, I won't bleed."

Link stood on his knees. Even without legs, he wasn't going to bow to this man. "I don't need to you bleed." He brought out his own left hand - encased with a metal glove. "I just need you to die." He cracked his wrist, and the glove activated.

And Terrarian couldn't move.

Terrarian's eyes widened. He was an idiot. How could he have forgotten that this guy had something that could control metal? And he'd pushed hundreds of metal scraps all throughout his body! This had been Link's plan all along. He couldn't walk. He couldn't talk. He could barely move an arm. He was totally, completely, dead.

"I didn't underestimate you," Link declared. "I just needed a good shot." His left hand carrying the Golden Sword rose and pointed straight ahead. "Now, I've got a perfect one." He pulled back with the Magnetism Glove and Terrarian came flying towards Link - and right towards the point of his blade.

Terrarian was afraid.

He didn't want to die.

He'd met so many people, saved the world so many times, found so many treasures, and had so many adventures, one might have said his time had come - that he'd done enough with his life to be fine with death. But there were adventures to be had yet. Mountains, in the distance of the grasslands, that he'd never climbed. Tortured souls to be found and released. Treasures to be dug up or looted. And people he'd never said goodbye to. People he'd never known how much he cared for until now. People he wanted to protect, to fight for, to know. To love.

To have a drink with on the village outskirts, watching the sunrise.

Whether it was because of his treasure, because of his friends, or both, Terrarian didn't know. But he didn't want to die.

He exhaled as he flew to Link.

And he fought.

Whether it was strength, willpower, or sheer dumb luck, his left arm somehow broke free of Link's hold just in time. The Meowmere materialized in his hand in an instant and a surprise swing knocked the Golden Sword out of Link's grasp _._ He sliced diagonally in a burst of cats and light - and severed Link's right arm. Link didn't even have time to gasp before his hold had completely vanished and Terrarian had impaled him completely through the stomach, point sticking out the other side.

"Sorry I messed up your shot, but I have something to live for."

Link was almost too shocked to speak. He coughed up blood. It dripped on the Meowmere's hilt. "Should have…"

"Yeah, you probably should have seen this coming," Terrarian affirmed. "All kinds of things have tried to kill me. You weren't going to be the one to do it."

"Should've…"

"Should've stayed in your own kingdom. Never have come out here."

"Should've…"

"Should've finished me when you had the chance. Now you'll never have it again. I'm sorry for you, but…this was necessary."

Link spat out a small pool of blood and stared into Terrarian's eyes. "Should've…aimed…for the head." He lifted his left hand, which now held the stopwatch.

Terrarian jolted back, shouted "No!" and the Meowmere vanished as a new weapon to destroy the watch was materializing in his hand.

But the weapon had only half-formed by the time Link clicked the "start" button.

Time stood still.

Link fell to the ground, blood pouring from where his arm used to be and where he'd been stabbed. He'd found the remaining piece and fixed the watch while he was in the cave. He didn't know for sure if it would work, so it was an emergency backup plan. One that he'd been very grateful he had created. He raised his hand and cast a Life Spell. That wasn't enough to fully heal him, but it gave him the energy to keep moving. He crawled over to his Golden Sword and spat out some more blood. A few drops got on the blade of the sword. Not important. He grabbed it with his remaining hand and rolled over to the still-frozen Terrarian. He swallowed some bile and said one last line. "I'm sorry to do this…but I have things to live for, too."

He stabbed Terrarian in the side and cut a straight line through, slicing his body in half. Terrarian exploded into body parts, revealing, among the pieces of his corpse, a huge amount of items and weapons.

 **-KO!-**

Link found a Super Healing Potion and drank it instantly. His wounds closed, and skin formed around the stump of his right arm. Almost all of his weapons were broken or used up and he'd lost three limbs…but he'd won. The world was safe. Speaking of weapons and items, it didn't look like Terrarian would be using any of his anytime soon. Link nodded regally to the fighter's remains, laid his magic bag on the ground, and began grabbing at things.

Minutes later, loot collected, Link sat down and blinked a few times. The world had returned to normal time - and he was happy to be alive to see it. Well, most of him was. Now might be a good time to check in on the Sheikah Scientists and see how their ideas of robotic limbs had turned out. But he needed to see someone else first. A slight smile on his face, Link raised his hand, cast Farore's Wind, and vanished.

…

Ooh, that victory definitely cost Link an arm and a leg. Well, two legs.

Weapon to weapon, buff to buff, feat to feat, this was an impressive match, with a fair amount of advantages to go around. Unfortunately for Terrarian, however, Link's advantages were more numerous and certainly more impactful. Let's first take a look at experience.

Surprisingly, they've both fought plenty of beings of similar power. Both easily slayed enormous Wyverns and Dragons, both have defeated hundreds of different monsters of similar capabilities, both have defeated beings capable of moving small moons, and Terrarian killed a god more powerful than a guy more powerful than a guy more powerful than a guy who could wipe out an acre of forest with ease, while Link defeated a powered up version of a powered up version of a powered up version of a powered up version of a guy who could destroy an acre of forest with a whisper.

However, Link's 12+ generations of experience way outclasses Terrarian's one year or so. And Link's had over twenty teachers over the years, including previous incarnations, while Terrarian is mostly self-taught. And while Terrarian has never met a swordsman with as much skill as he possesses (though his skill is already less than Link's) or one with nearly as broad an arsenal, Link…has. Heck, Ganondorf's two most well-known features are his mastery of swordsmanship and his unlimited magical powers, so Link's no stranger to people with those capabilities. But besides him, Link's defeated his more powerful alter ego, Dark Link, several times, and frequently faces off against himself and all his own items via the Four Sword in training. He's fought lots of swordsmen and magicians and plenty of people who are both, while Terrarian's never even met anyone like Link before.

It is _possible_ (doubtful, but possible) that the Meowmere is more powerful than even the Golden Sword, and it's true that the Pulse Bow and S.M.D.G (alongside Luminite Arrows and Bullets) are way better than the Sacred Bow or Nice Bow, and even the Mogma Mitts couldn't match up to the Luminite Pickaxe, but in virtually every other match-up, Link's weapons prove superior.

Terrarian's strongest usable explosive is the Dynamite (as the Holy Hand Grenade takes way too long to blow up for Link to NOT get out of the way), which destroys all blocks in a 14-foot radius. However, Link has used his normal bombs to blow open huge mountain gaps that stretch over 30 feet tall and nearly as long - about the same amount that a Holy Hand Grenade could destroy. And Link has far more powerful and far more versatile explosives in his toolbag. Terrarian may be able to throw five Light Discs at a time, but they can't travel nearly as far, perform nearly as many twists and turns, or hit nearly as many targets as either of Link's Boomerangs. And the Magical Boomerang one-shots pretty much everything it hits, while the Light Discs don't actually do that much damage. Not even mentioning the Gale Boomerang's tornadoes. Terrarian's buff potions stack the odds a little more in his favor…but not much. And compared to Link's armor, they're pretty pathetic. Plus, the Magnifying Lens nullifies the Invisibility Potion, and Link's Transformation Masks put the minor buffs and ability changes that Terrarian's shapeshifting can achieve to shame. As handy as the Static Hook is for exploration, the Double Clawshot beats it by…well, being the exact same thing, but with one on each arm, stretching way farther, and actually being able to damage and stun his foes. Terrarian could surround himself in Lihzahrd Blocks, but Farore's Wind and the Magic Cape lets Link easily get by that. And while Link can restore his health and magic ten times via Blue Potions, Terrarian can only restore about half his health every hour they're fighting - giving Link a firm advantage in that department. Link holds way more skill and versatility in his magical arsenal too - the Fire and Ice Rods alone surpass most of what magic Terrarian can throw at him, and his magic-rebounding swords, Reflect Spell, Whisp Ring, and Mirror Shield easily takes care of any magical weapons Terrarian might have, including the Last Prism and Lunar Flare. Oh, and speaking of magic, it's true that Terrarian has way more potions than Link to refill it - but it's also true that he goes through his supply of mana in seconds, way, way faster than Link, who can cast the Fire Rod's ultimate fireball of death attack almost a dozen times before running low on just one magic bar. Even while using the Mana Flower, if Terrarian's constantly using his magic weapons like the Lunar Flare and Last Prism, he'll still run out of potions much faster than Link (even if Link is also constantly using magic). And it takes him way too long to recover his mana without a potion for it to continue to play much of a factor. And, of course, the more quickly he uses his magic, the weaker it becomes. Oh, and while the Ankh Shield does prevent Terrarian from several debuffs Link might inflict on him, and would put out the flames if he caught on fire, it's important to note that it doesn't protect from fire-based, ice-based, electric-based, or poison-based attacks. He's still hurt from those types of weapons and abilities - he just doesn't remain burning alive, poisoned, frozen, or stunned. So Link's element-based weapons (like the Fire Rod) would still be very effective. And while the sentries of the Lunar Portal and Rainbow Crystal are powerful, not only has Link dealt with similar sentries many, many times before, but the fact that they're stationary means that he could always just…move out of the way. Terrarian would be able to place the sentries near Link over and over until he ran out of mana, but not only are Link's swords more than capable of destroying them (both the Master Sword and Four Sword have sealed portals and cut through things tougher than diamond), but, even if they weren't, all the sentries would really do is drag the battle on longer. Thanks to Link's many defenses, Terrarian still has to close in on Link if he wants to properly damage him, giving Link control over the battlefield. It's also because of this that the Solar Wings wouldn't have an enormous impact on the fight - plus, Link's also fought dozens of incredibly powerful flying fighters before. In fact, there's very little Terrarian can present that Link hasn't seen or dealt with before.

But there are a few things. The Terrarian Yo-Yo, for example, and the Rainbow Gun, Vampire Knives, Solar Eruption and Stardust Dragon are all things he wouldn't be used to defending against. But Link is adaptable beyond all else, and each of Terrarian's stranger weapons can be defended against and cut down. And while the Stardust Dragon, an astral being, cannot be harmed by any normal weapon or enemy, all three of Link's best swords can harm and even kill spiritual beings and ghosts, leaving little question that he could dispatch the dragon. And let's not forget all of Link's many unique weapons, such as the Long Hook, Cane of Pacci, Iron Gauntlets, and Magnetism Gloves, which are nothing like anything Terrarian has seen before, and it's unlikely he could defend well against them, since most of the weapons and attacks used against him are really just upgraded ones from earlier in his adventures. Oh, yeah, and the Magnetism Gloves completely ruin the chances a whole lot of his weapons have of being impactful in the fight. If they can pull giant steel balls that would weigh over 100 tons across the room in less than two seconds, they can certainly affect any of Terrarian's way smaller metallic weapons just as easily. And Terrarian has absolutely no defense against Link's time-stopping items and moves.

And Link's dodged attacks that move at the speed of sound before, so, adding in the factors of the Mirror Shield sending the Luminite Bullets and Arrows back and his many armor options, there's no reason to say that the four weapons Terrarian takes advantage in guarantees victory. Plus, while some of Terrarian's potions and weapons do inflict debuffs, not only does the Red Mail (and several other items we didn't mention for redundancy's sake) protect him from the fire-based ones, but just equipping the Whisp Ring would snuff out pretty much all others real fast. And let's be honest; Terrarian would at least struggle to keep up with one Link, so there's no way he could keep up with four of him. Yes, the Four Sword can be broken, but Terrarian almost never goes for the weapons when he's fighting armed monsters or bosses. He just dodges, lands a few hits, and retreats. There's little chance of him figuring out that he can stop the clones by breaking the Four Sword. Plus, even if he did figure it out, it's unlikely he'd be able to break the weapon anytime soon. I mean, the only time it's ever broken before was when the sorcerer Vaati (remember him? He's the one who destroyed a forest with a whisper) hit it with a full-powered blast of magic after it'd been rusting for well over a hundred years. And that was the Picori Blade, its weakest form - the Four Sword is undoubtedly much tougher. And, as a final nail in this arsenal's coffin, yes, anything dealing over 21 damage can hurt steel - minorly. The Destroyer has 120,000 health thanks to his being made of metal - and 22 damage would only do 1 damage to that alloy. 1 out of 120,000. Obviously, this makes the Terrarian's weapons not quite as impressive as you may believe. Still powerful, certainly - but likely not more so than Link's. In fact, let's do some math. The Destroyer releases several metal probes during his fight. So, let's say that slicing straight through this probe would, working in the defense and health total, take 315 damage. Since the Master Sword has shown to be able to do similar things, let's put that as its base damage output. Scaling appropriately, the Golden Sword and Four Sword would deal a bit under 1300 damage - more than enough to kill the Terrarian in one hit, and far more damage than any of Terrarian's weapons could do. Estimating Link being able to slice three times per second, his DPS with the Golden Sword alone would be just under 3800. In comparison, Terrarian's highest damage output would be with the Last Prism, which, if he caught Link in a beam without any kind of protection (which is incredible unlikely) has a DPS of 3600. And it also puts quite a few of Link's weapons ahead of Terrarian's; the Skull Hammer broke a crown stronger than steel, so let's put its damage as the same, 315. In comparison, the Solar Flare Hamaxe only deals 60. And Link's Magical Boomerang has also obliterated steel foes before, so if we again take that as a base, it deals 315 damage. Even if all five of the Light Discs hit a foe at once, that's only 285 damage. And the Silver Arrows actually have a higher DPS than the S.D.M.G., since the S.D.M.G.'s DPS with Luminite Bullets is 1188, while, considering the Silver Arrows one-shotted a guy who was literally a giant steel ball, we can underestimate them to be, again, 315 damage, and, since he can shoot four arrows a second, that's 1260. Though it should be noted that it'd be much easier to dodge those arrows than the bullets. And none of this was counting any of Link's magical boosts, like the Red Ring, or his transformations of Fierce Deity Link or the Triforce of Power, all of which absolutely blow these numbers out of the water. But, as we've shown, Link doesn't even need the few advantages we just gave him this paragraph to have the superior arsenal.

Plus, Link has a massive physical advantage. Even with a wooden axe, Terrarian takes several seconds to chop down a small tree, while Link can do so with a single punch. And while Terrarian can effortlessly run around while wearing 3,000 pounds of Platinum Armor, Link's capable of easily tossing around a giant ball and chain that, compared to his height (170 cm in Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess's Link is taller, but let's lowball it), should weigh over 10,000 pounds. And with their strength boosters, even with all of his weapons and accessories boosted and with the help of armor and potions, Terrarian's strength is only ever doubled at most, putting his lifting and wielding strength at 6,120 pounds, while Link lifted a granite pillar that would weigh over 466,000 pounds. Not to mention that Link has a ring that doubles his strength and striking power. When it comes to speed, surprisingly, both have similar reaction times, easily dodging magical lightning and dozens of lasers. But Link takes a definite advantage in travel speed. Even with his enhancements, Terrarian's running speed is about 26 MPH. But Link can run 30 MPH without breaking a sweat. Yes, with wings, Terrarian's speed is amped up to 57 MPH, with the boots his top speed is 34 MPH, his dash ability moves at 52 MPH, and the maximum UFO Mount speed is 58 MPH, but with Bunny Hood, Link can move twice as fast as he normally can and still use all his weapons. Er, that's 60 MPH, the average speed of a car moving down the highway. And that's not mentioning the Pegasus Boots, which quadruples his speed to reach well over 100 MPH. And the difference in durability is just stupid - though not unfairly so. Terrarian has always been made of glass compared to the rest of his world. He'll always die in just a few hits. Despite this, he _can_ take two explosions that blow a huge hole in the side of a mountain before dying via Dynamite. Link can do this too via Bombs. Except, ignoring that they've proven more powerful, it takes twenty to kill him, rather than two. And with items and armor, Terrarian only gets an extra bit of Health and enough defense to survive one more blast, while Link gets his durability quadrupled and then doubled (via Shield Spell). That puts his durability levels at almost sixty times that of Terrarian's. Yes, by overestimating the intended effect of the Dynamite to also include cubic feet and it being able to blow up things harder than steel, it is possible to hype up Terrarian's durability to being able to take several tons of TNT - more than enough to destroy a real-world two-story house. But if we want to use overestimations or outliers, there's the time Link blew up a grenade inside a massive storeroom filled with thousands of grenades. The resulting explosion leveled a mountain, but even though Link was at the center of the blast, he was totally fine. So, since both of these feats are well beyond what either should normally be capable of (and it puts Link's durability several thousand times higher than Terrarian's), let's go back to reality, where Link still somehow has sixty times the durability that Terrarian does. Oh, and while the overestimation puts Terrarian's durability at over 5 tons of TNT, Fierce Deity Link can deliver a force of over 250 tons of TNT with one slice. So, yeah.

However, Link's huge physical advantage doesn't actually mean anything when faced up against a foe like Terrarian. Terrarian's fighting style means that, by repeating a pattern of attack consistently, he's capable of beating pretty much any physically superior foe. Heck, by comparing Link's bombs to the dynamite (estimating them to deal the same amount in Terraria damage) eight of the bosses he's faced have just as much health as Link or even more. The Moon Lord alone has a total of over 200,000 Health, compared to Link's 40,000 with the Red Mail and Shield Spell activated. So, why should this be different? Why should Link succeed where gods have failed?

Well, maybe if those gods had fought and strategized like Link does, they might have stood a chance.

Link is an incredible strategist, normally capable of pulling off a victory even if there's only one possible way to do so - providing that his enemy gives him enough time to figure it out. Given time, Link can figure out the patterns of any opponent, their capabilities, and exactly what he must do to stop them. That's why the only times he's been defeated are when he was unexpectedly rushed, given almost no time to prepare, or being suddenly swarmed while protecting someone else. When he does have time, he's always prevailed. Normally, he can buy time with his many spells and armor options…but in this fight he didn't even need to do that, because Terrarian's fighting style plays perfectly into Link's hands. Terrarian is a hit-and-run fighter, always getting in minor blows before ducking out of the way of anything that could kill him. He reuses the same patterns, over and over, dealing minimal damage, but damage nonetheless. He's always fought against beings that fit into this mold. The Dungeon Guardian may be able to kill him in one hit and may take twenty thousand hits to kill, but he's also predictable. Terrarian just has to keep in the same pattern for hours until he finally falls. This works against almost every foe in his world - but unfortunately for him, this kind of fighter grants Link every opportunity he wants to both form a strategy and enact it. The minimal damage alongside Link's large healthpool gives him plenty of time, and the fact that Terrarian uses incredibly simple patterns just guarantees Link has something to exploit.

To sum it up, Link's entire perspective on fighting is shaped around exploiting an enemy's repeating patterns, and Terrarian's entire perspective on fighting is based on using repeating patterns to deal minimal damage and kill his foe over time. Since Link is capable of recognizing these patterns easily and has always successfully adapted to and exploited such patterns in the past, there's no reason he couldn't here. And, thanks to Terrarian's low health, all it would take is a couple good hits to bring him down. Add to that Link's advantages in arsenal, skill, experience, and all physical abilities, and it was only a matter of time before he achieved victory. And Terrarian is known for giving his opponents plenty of time.

The Link to Terrarian's failure was in his previous successes.

 **The winner is Link.**

…

Look guys, after this whole thing and how much time and research I put into it, I wanted something simple. Maybe not easy, but something where both characters didn't have obscene arsenals and fighting styles and things that take a lot of work to properly represent in a 9,000 word battle. But, given that the next one is the "Season Finale," so to speak, it's only right that I do the battle I made this whole story for. The one I've been gradually figuring out over the past two years. These combatants have fought before, but many things have happened since then, and this time, we'll include just about everything we can.

NEXT TIME, ON THE SEASON FINALE…

A red plumber runs toward a blue hedgehog, readying a powerful punch.

VS.

A blue hedgehog runs toward a red plumber, readying a powerful kick.

(Mario vs. Sonic)

Get ready, folks. It's going to be epic.


	11. SEASON FINALE: Mario vs Sonic

**A/N: Thank you, everyone, for reading this. It's been a lot of fun writing this season. See the end of the episode for discussion of future plans. Thank you especially to Shadowjab17 for his heartfelt reviews. You make my day every time I reread those, dude. Big thanks as well to DB-20 for taking an awesome interest in the series and supplying some great questions. Keep it coming, guys. The more questions I can answer, the more I know my research, and the more careful I am in the future.**

 **Enjoy an episode I've been working on ever since Death Battle released their fight all those years ago. If you're salty…leave a comment. This is all for you guys.**

 **Have fun.**

 _SEASON FINALE: Episode 10: Mario vs. Sonic_

Rivals for decades, battlers of everything from characters to music to story to, of course, games and sale numbers. There has never been a more fierce rivalry between two combatants on this show before or since. And yet, neither has there been this much respect. These two are former enemies turned best friends, with only one score left to settle.

These two icons of gaming have fought in a previous episode of Death Battle, but they have continued on their adventures since that day, gaining far more to work with, and besides, that conclusion really wasn't satisfying or well-written. At all. It left us all with many questions, and one beyond all of them: Who would really win?

Mario, the most famous video game figure of all time, and Sonic, the only gaming icon to ever truly contend with him.

We're using every available resource for both combatants and granting them everything they can normally access – except Paper Mario and Archie Sonic. While I've used Paper Kamek and Paper Bowser, and, in the future, may continue to use Paper Mario versions of characters like Paper Peach or Paper Luigi, Paper Mario is so incredibly different from his regular counterpart that, unlike the others, it feels…wrong to include him here. It'd be like including some random guy named Mario that appeared in Marvel Comics, or something. His power set and abilities are entirely different! Archie Sonic has also been discounted for similar reasons – and also because he can run across every universe in less than a day and destroy entire dimensions with one punch. That's stupid. What's Mario supposed to do against that? Sonic's never done anything like that in canon. Regardless, it's time for the season finale.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find which of these long-feuding icons of heroism would truly win a Death Battle.

 **Mario:**

 _After fending off several of the Great Balls of Fire, Luigi moans and declares "With that kind of firepower, King Koopa's unstoppable!"_

 _Mario seems surprised by his bleak outlook. "Unstoppable? We're plumbers! If we can unstop a stop, we can stop the unstoppable!"_

In the 1980s, companies across the world were just beginning to realize the vast potential that video games held for the future. With this new format of entertainment, the general public need no longer be separated from the stories they heard. They could now become the hero, slay the dragon, and rescue the princess themselves. As arcades grew more and more popular, the games grew more and more varied, and, when Atari released the first well-known home video game console, the potential only seemed to grow. The amount of money to be made could be staggering, creating entirely new companies singularly devoted to this new craze. Was it the future of entertainment and storytelling, or was it just a fad, destined to be forgotten in the next decade? That was the question everyone had on their lips – and, unfortunately, some companies believed the wrong answer.

In an effort to get all that they could out of what would soon be forgotten, most game divisions of companies began shoveling out as many exciting games as fast as possible for as cheap as possible. This ended up oversaturating the market with nothing but disappointment after disappointment. Nothing could last longer than a month on the shelf, the games that did weren't good, and it wasn't long before the public stopped buying video games altogether. They didn't realize it at the time, but these companies had created a self-fulfilling prophecy. After a particularly horrible release of an incredibly overhyped game based on the movie E.T., every magazine let the public know exactly what they thought. In 1983, it was declared: Video Games are dead. And so it might have stayed, if one playing-card company hadn't thrown its hat into the ring. When Nintendo released their home console, the Nintendo Entertainment System, it seemed like a futile attempt to bring life back to a long-forgotten fad. But although fad is only one letter away from fade, Nintendo only proved that day just how many letters away it was…from Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros. wasn't the first Mario game ever released, but it was the first one that really mattered. All of the sudden, people were interested. An incredible game with graphics never before seen on a home console? And the game lasted for several hours and the console was surprisingly cheap at the time? Such a thing had never been done before. Customers came in droves to the NES, and that put Mario as the new face of gaming. Having saved the entire industry from disaster with a single title, Mario became more well-known than Mickey Mouse and kept releasing award-winning game after award-winning game. Over thirty years later, and the entire industry around Mario has changed – but Mario games are still being released, are still crazy popular, and are still just as good today as they were three decades ago.

As for Mario himself, in his games, he was always born to be superior to anything that stood in his way. Allegedly born out of the core of a star, Mario is the original of the Star Children, legendary children with access to hidden abilities and destined for greatness. As such, he was sent to his chosen parents in Italy via Stork Express. Apparently they chose the most inadequate Stork in the world, however, as he dropped Baby Mario and Baby Luigi three times AND delivered them to the wrong house. Thankfully, the peaceful, yet powerful, race known as the Yoshis, and future Mario, which was a thing, recognized Baby Mario's importance and helped him whenever he needed it. Yes, Mario commanded an army of killer dinosaurs when he was under a month old. This was but a taste of what his future held.

After safely making it to his parents, Mario grew up knowing Italian and English, and with a great love for food. He became a natural protégé in, well, everything. After learning a few languages and serving in the Vietnam War (no, not kidding), Mario moved to Brooklyn with Luigi to attend the world-famous Plumber's Academy, where he and Luigi ended up saving the life of the President of the United States. Talk about a good first day! After graduating, Mario and Luigi spent all their days in their Plumbing…Shop? Business? Home? Something. They spent all their time there where they unstopped stops and unclogged clogs for the likes of Elvis Presley, Doctor Frankenstein, Inspector Gadget, and Crocodile Dundee. Everything went normally – until one of the drains they unclogged turned out to actually be a Warp Pipe to the Mushroom Kingdom. Mere seconds after arriving, they accidentally thwarted the invading forces of Bowser Koopa, who swore to make them his mortal enemies for the rest of his life. Even though they have found several ways to head back to Brooklyn, Mario and Luigi established roots, friends, and family in the Mushroom Land, and decided to live out their lives there – while dealing with the schemes of Bowser on a daily basis.

Mario is a kind-hearted, but brash hero, with a strong moral center and the ability to make almost any enemy into a friend – even Bowser, given enough time. He knows at least five martial arts, including Karate, which focuses on strong stances and swift strikes to vital areas and fast-moving blocks, Taekwondo, which focuses on extremely fast and dangerous kicks, Jujustu, which focuses on dodging, swift movement, and utilizing your opponent's momentum against them, turning their own bodies into the origin of their pain, and Boxing, which is…well, Boxing. Specifically Slugger-Style Boxing, focusing on delivering the most pain with the fewest punches. He also has some amount of knowledge in Sumo, Wrestling, Kendo, and probably Hapkido, given how fluently he can move his hands in sync with his body. However, his most dangerous martial art he has skill in is Plumb Fu. Yes. Plumb Fu. It's Kung Fu…for plumbers. But don't sell it short – Plumb Fu is well-known as the most powerful martial arts on the Mushroom Planet. It focuses on fast maneuvers and readiness for your opponent's moves, similar to Kung Fu, but specializes in adaptability. Those professionally trained in the art can turn anything they get their hands on into a lethal weapon. Mario was taught this martial art alongside Luigi by Misaki, the greatest martial artist on the planet – and earned a black belt in less than one day. Holy crap.

While Mario is plenty good going fist-to-fist, his main thing is jumps. He can jump over twenty feet into the air with surprising ease, and has learned a variety of other jumps that let him reach far higher. The Triple Jump requires space, but allows Mario to jump three times as high as he normally can. The Backflip is a surprise move meant to spread distance between him and the opponent, the Side Somersault can reach greater heights than nearly all other jumps, but takes time to get right, the Spin Attack gives Mario additional height and control over where he lands and is effective as a combat maneuver as well, the Wall Jump uses the leverage from walls to jump directly off of them and higher up, the Long Jump springs Mario forward, covering dozens of feet at once, and the Ground Pound uses magical means to take all of the impact force applied to Mario and instead give it to the opponent as well. And, after doing a Ground Pound, he can jump immediately after for the Ground Pound Jump, which lets him scale buildings no problem. At his absolute best, Mario is able to out-jump spring-loaded robots and reach up to _20,000 feet into the air_! And you thought Plumb Fu was crazy. And it's still nothing to everything else this guy can do!

As a Star Child, Mario is able to use a finite pool of Star Power to perform superhuman feats – and use superpowers that go well beyond your average video game hero. He can store huge amounts of items and weapons in a pocket dimension, resist curses, fight for hours on end, doesn't age, can materialize any item he needs whenever (though only a few times per fight), hold his breath for several minutes, hear through the vacuum of space, shapeshift to look like anything (though he doesn't gain their abilities or properties), and…transform toilet brushes into zippers. Again, not kidding. Apparently, he's one of three chosen heroes by a goddess of…cheese or something, and THAT was his granted superpower. I mean, I guess it's handy if he gets locked into a bathroom stall…but that's about it. Also, after saving the Music Keys, dancing was literally etched into his soul, making him one of the best dancers in the Mushroom Kingdom. Again…not joking. However, his best (and most commonly used) superpower is Firebrand. Taught to him by the Fire God himself, with the Firebrand ability, Mario can conjure and manipulate…well, fire. He can throw dozens of fireballs, set his entire body on fire, light up his strikes and make them more powerful (because, you know, fire is the physical manifestation of energy and all that), and throw a giant fireball of death several times larger than himself. And, because it's made up of his own magic, the fire Mario produces will not hurt him.

And while it's not a superpower per say, his senses are so acute, he can catch and fight on par with invisible foes and has pinpoint accuracy with any conceivable weapon – even when he backhands a 500 lb bomb a mile and a half into the air, he still hits his target right on the nose! He can also harm metaphysical entities (likely due to some magic stuff), communicate with all types of animals, and his capabilities as a plumber go past absurd and into unbelievable. While trapped in a pit with no tools or materials whatsoever, he constructed a waterworking system stretching over two miles long that drained the water of a nearby lake in order to fill the hole, allowing him and his friends to swim out. What the heck. With Luigi, he also reworked the flow of an entire river via another several-mile-long usage of pipe that didn't use to exist, and when Bowser toppled over a 7,000 Ton steel pillar and it was going to fall on them, Mario and Luigi, in less than three seconds, refitted a fire hydrant to propel water outward at a high enough pressure to _completely stop the falling pillar in the air_. SERIOUSLY. WHAT THE HECK. Oh, and when he discovered the Fountain of Youth (because yes, he did that), Peach was turned into a baby. Of course, the Fountain of Youth makes things younger, so, to turn her back into an adult, he just up and REVERSED THE FLOW OF THE WATERFALL, MAKING IT DFEY THE LAWS OF PHYSICS AND FLOW UPWARDS FROM A POOL _WHICH IT STILL SOMEHOW FILLED._ That just might be the most ridiculous feat I've ever seen.

With all that and some insanely high strength, speed, and durability, he's done a whole lot. However, it all comes at a horrible price: Mario…is a pizza-tarian. Okay, in all seriousness, though, he's always hungry and loves Italian food beyond all else. He'll chomp down on entire heads of garlic as if they were candy.

 _After swathing through several bamboo shoots in the Amazon Jungle, Mario stops and shares a brilliant idea with the rest of the group. "Let's take a lunch break!"_

" _Oh, Mario!" Princess Peach groans. "You just ate three guavas, four breadfruit, and two bananas!"_

 _Mario sets his hands on his hips and informs her "If food isn't pasta, it doesn't count!"_

When he's all stuffed up with pasta power, Mario can do some nutty things. One time, after a nice garlic snack, he went up to Bowser while they were fighting in a castle and _breathed_ on him _so hard_ , he went flying back, smashing through a wall, and bringing the entire castle down on top of them! Of course, Mario was fine. He is tough enough to survive a massive explosion that obliterated this Rapunzel-esque stone tower, after all. Given the size of the blast and the wreckage afterward, that could have been up to 84 kilotons of TNT. He even took a 35,000 foot fall after coming out of a warp pipe and was barely dazed, and was once struck in the head with three giant ball and chains and just…grabbed them all and sent them flying back. He's outrun lava flows, avalanches, soundwaves, and even explosions, which can move over 6,000 MPH! He lifted and threw King Bob-Omb, who weighs a minimum of 78 Tons, fought a giant robot mech the size of skyscraper and blew it to smithereens, and, another time, easily blocked a blow from a robot that would weigh almost 31,000 TONS!

I'm even more impressed with the time he fought that dragon. The Lord of Lightning is a powerful mythical beast that measures nearly twelve feet high and over six hundred feet long. Using a density of 55 lb/ft^3, the average density of ground meat, and assuming strength and toughness similar to real-life anacondas, this giant dragon could have easily both exerted and withstood 34,000 Metric Tons of Force! You'd think even Mario would have a tough time putting that thing down, right? Nope! Three Ground Pounds later, and it's down for the count. And that was after surviving a full blast of his lightning breath to the face, which could have reached temperatures of around 53,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's over five times hotter than the surface of the sun! And not a single hair out of place – that's what you call being tough! Even more impressive is the time he fought Gobblegut, a far larger snake-like creature that could consume planetoids. Given its size and estimating density and strength as we did the Lord of Lightning, this thing could pretty easily take blows of over 46,000 Tons, and Mario reduced that thing to dust! DUST!

And, of course, all of this was without his many, many power-ups.

Mario has dozens of different power-ups he can use and has used over the years, and each one grants him special abilities. Starting with the basics, the Super Mushroom heals his wounds, the Fire Flower enhances his already-great pyrokinetics, the Super Star and Rainbow Star both make him invulnerable to damage and able to kill normal enemies with one touch for about fifteen seconds, the Super Flower lets him shoot bouncy gravity-defying balls of pain, the Carrot grants him ears that he can use to slow his descent, and the Spring Mushroom grants him higher jumps at the expense of mobility and control. He also has a few different Caps that give him special powers. The Wing Cap lets him fly for around a minute, the Vanish Cap turns him invisible and intangible for twenty seconds, and the Metal Cap turns him invulnerable and ten times heavier and stronger for the same amount of time. Also, he has a Luigi Cap and a Wario Cap. These hats give him the bodies and physical traits of Luigi and Wario, respectively. Luigi is faster and lighter than Mario, though not as strong, while Wario is stronger than Mario, but not as fast. Moving off caps, the Boo Mushroom turns him into a ghost. In this form, he can read the languages of the dead, turn invisible, and phase through walls and attacks – though being exposed to sunlight will instantly take away this power-up. The Propeller Mushroom makes his hat a living helicopter, able to fly through the air and achieve slow descents, while the Rock Mushroom turns him into a rock-based wrecking ball. The Bee Mushroom allows him hovering flight and the ability to stick to certain surfaces, the Mini Mushroom makes him super small, and the Mega Mushroom makes him super huge and super invulnerable for a short time.

Finally moving away from mushrooms, the Super Acorn turns him into a flying squirrel, which slows his descent (again) and can be boosted high into the air. Far better, though, is the P-Acorn, which grants the same powers and the ability to boost himself infinitely – essentially acting like a less-good form of flying. Speaking of flying, he can do that with the Red Star for around a minute, and can do it forever with the P-Wing, plus perform a nifty tail-whip. The Tanooki Suit also lets him perform that tail-whip and has more limited flight, but makes up for it by being able to transform into an invincible statue. And the Cape Feather gives Mario a superhero-like cape, which he can use to fly effortlessly through the air better than any other flight power-up he owns and to deflect projectiles. The Power Balloon inflates him like a…um, balloon, the Ice Flower lets him skate on water and lava alike, freezing it solid as he moves, and the Cloud Flower lets him walk on water and on clouds and create up to three cloud barriers to save himself from falling or reach high areas. With the Frog Suit he becomes a far better swimmer, with the Penguin Suit he can swim way better, belly-slide, and throw magical ice balls that freeze his foes solid, and with the Blue Koopa Shell he can swim better again and curl up into the indestructible shell and control its movements, forcefully destroying everything in his path – and somehow being able to see everything around him. The Boomerang Flower gives him long-distance throwing weapons that knock his foes out and return to his hand, the Super Bell turns him into Cat Mario, who is faster, can climb up sheer cliffsides easily, and attacks enemies with its claws, and the Hammer Suit's armor is impenetrable and, with it on, Mario can throw endless amounts of steel-shattering hammers. As if all that wasn't enough, the Double Cherry will clone Mario exactly, with all of his clones following the original's moves.

And yet, none of these are his most powerful power-up. The Lucky Bell grants him all the powers of Cat Mario, like enhanced speed, metal-shredding claws, and awesome climbing powers, and can turn into an invincible statue that heals itself while falling, though the statue can only last twelve seconds at a time. And yet, even that pales in comparison to the Gold Flower, Mario's ultimate power-up weapon. This power-up lets Mario throw Golden Fireballs, which explode. Anything caught in the blast radius, no matter what it is, is instantly transformed into gold coins. Because it works through transformation, it doesn't matter whether his opponent is incredibly strong; one touch and they're history. The only things it has trouble with are the undead and really durable creatures like Bowser. It takes three hits for most tough creatures like that just to knock them out (not transform, knock out). Also, it only lasts eight to ten minutes at most, after which Mario reverts to Fire Mario.

You may not believe it, but even that's not Mario's greatest power-up. Behold the Invincibility Leaf, a power-up that makes Mario literally impossible to defeat. He can fly, tail-whip strong enough to break titanium, glide, run on water, and is completely invincible! He can't be hurt by any physical attack, and pretty much anyone that touches him instantly dies. You might be wondering "How does he not win instantly when wearing this thing?" Well, he usually…does win instantly. However, it's not totally an instant-win move – tougher opponents, like Koopalings, require multiple hits to knock out, and it does clearly have a time limit before reverting to a Tanooki Suit, as he can't keep it for more than one level. We're never given an exact number on what it is, but given Mario's average travel speed and the time limits in the corner of each level, around eight minutes is a good estimate. Also, it doesn't protect from poison or heat. He'll lose this power-up if he touches lava, or anything hotter.

Yeah, that's one of Mario's stranger weaknesses. The dude can't handle the heat – literally. In most cases, just touching a spot of lava will instantly kill him regardless of defense. This weakness is somewhat nullified by his classic hat, which has some sort of magic imbued that not only doubles his durability but also protects him from atmospheric heat. That's why he can take the 53,000 degree lightning breath or fight a battle in the middle of a hollow sun and be fine, but dies as soon as he touches extremely hot metal. However, without his hat, even something as simple as harsh sunlight will slowly kill him. That's one of the reasons Bowser's always filling his castles with lava, and why Mario's gotten so good at dodging heat-based attacks and avoiding lava pits. While he won't die instantly if he touches such things with the Invincibility Leaf activated, it will still rid him of his power.

Actually, that's another of Mario's biggest weaknesses. Almost all of his power-ups instantly vanish after one attack connects – no matter how weak or strong it is. Hence why his best equipment pieces aren't actually power-ups at all. Instead, he wields many weapons while protected by magical armor.

He wears the A-OK Wear, which can first be bought at Level 25 of Bowser's Inside Story. Scaling directly from those stats, this armor is better than anything he's worn in any of his other RPGs. It magically gives him an 18.2% boost in Speed and Strength, an 18.5% boost in his pool of Star Power, and an incredible 183% increase in durability! However, this magical pair of overalls' greatest trait is that it magically makes him immune to any and all status effects. He can't be poisoned, frozen, turned to stone, put to sleep, OHKO'd, cursed, stopped in time, or, well, anything that counts as a status effect. He also wears the DX POW Gloves and the DX POW Boots, both of which increase his strength by 20%.

This all goes great with his many…many weapons. Starting out with the most famous of the bunch, F.L.U.D.D. Created by Professor E. Gadd, this water backpack can shoot out high-pressure water to clean goop and force enemies to drink so much water that their stomachs burst. Huh. Maybe that's not such a kid-friendly thing when I think about it. F.L.U.D.D. has four different nozzles that Mario can use in tandem: the main nozzle squirts out the water ahead of him, the Hover Nozzle turns it into a water jetpack, lifting Mario off of the ground and allowing him to, well, hover, the Rocket Nozzle sends him flying hundreds of feet into the air with no extra boost from his jumps, and the Turbo Nozzle gives him a huge speed boost – basically going turbo in a racecar. Also, F.L.U.D.D. is sentient, and can talk to Mario, offering him advice. However, it requires a steady supply of water to, you know, USE WATER, and must be refilled quite often. Luckily, F.L.U.D.D. is hardly the only weapon in Mario's arsenal.

Mario wields a Cannon Box, which shoots out explosive cannonballs that can destroy entire buildings. The Flannel Phenom is a powerful energy cannon that's ten times more powerful than an energy cannon that can obliterate robots. He also has used the Super Scope, which is a, well, plasma laser cannon! He uses this to destroy giant mechs with the greatest of ease. Yeah, I didn't think Mario would be this comfortable with guns, but he totally is. Stepping outside of guns, he can summon Piranha Plants that eat up his foes, he holds dozens of nearly-unbreakable Koopa Shells, each of which can go through concrete like it's thin air, and the Spin Drill, which can dill through mountain-sized planetoids in just a couple of seconds. He also can wear Karubi's Shoe, a giant impenetrable shoe which he can hop around in and crush everything in his way with. His most common fencing weapons are his trusty plungers. Mario keeps hundreds of these things on him at all times, and even though they're simple plumbing tools with wooden handles, they can stick to even newly-waxed surfaces, support the weight of several people, and be used as swords in combat. Mario has won many a duel with these things. He's also utilized a Lightplunger in battle, an electricity-based non-fatal alternative to lightsabers. In addition, he regularly uses different hammers to crush his enemies, including the Grid Gavel, which can crush incredibly strong metals and hack into electronic software. But his greatest hammer is the Ultra Hammer. This golden gavel of justice is unbreakable, capable of sending small buildings across the horizon, and can break through solid blocks of gold, titanium, and even tungsten, the strongest naturally-occurring metal in the world, like they're nothing! Oh – and it lets him hover for a few seconds and deflects any projectile, even magic.

However, the most powerful weapon Mario has ever wielded comes in the form of Excalibur, a magical Plumber's Snake that's basically the Excalibur of legend, but way better, since it can not only cut, but can grow and shrink in size, fire magic beams, counter some forms of opposing magic, and stiffen for duels and loosen to trap foes or other blades. And, of course, it's unbreakable – and might even be sentient, as it seems to obey Mario's every thought. Excalibur radiates so much unrestrained power, merely touching the thing transformed Mario into Super Mario.

Oh, right. You don't know what that is yet, do you?

Prepare to have your mind blown.

 _Looking upon a field of Fire Flowers, Mario grumbles "Couldn't we just take a little pasta break?"_

" _Please, Mario," Peach pleads, "get Super now, eat later."_

 _Mario grabs one of the Fire Flowers. Instantly, he's transformed. His overalls and cap grow white and his shirt becomes red. A golden aura of power surrounds him._

" _Faster than a vanishing claw!" He shouts out. "More powerful than an electric drain snake! It's-a Super Mario!"_

Super Mario is Mario's most powerful power-up, and by a huge margin. He can only achieve the form by using objects of great power, like Magic Pendants, Super Stars, or Excalibur. Well, he can activate a VERY LIMITED version of the form through use of Fire Flowers, but that form can do almost nothing compared to full-powered Super Mario. And, while it does have a time limit, it can last for over an hour, so he doesn't have to worry too much about it going out in the middle of a fight.

In his fully-powered Super State, Mario gains a massive boost in all physical abilities. He can breathe without oxygen, walk on air, and his fire attacks are upgraded to become white fire, which is 700 degrees hotter than his normal orange fire. He's tough enough to take plasma blasts from an army, fast enough to outrun lightning bolts, and strong enough to slice a massive battleship clean in half with one hand! He's defeated Bowser while only using one finger, destroyed a robot that Bowser claimed could wipe out all life on the planet, and his aura is so powerful that the form incinerated a rope _just by being next to it_. Doesn't sound too impressive – until you realize that this was a special rope of Bowser's own design, and was so strong, normal Mario couldn't do a thing to it. And remember, normal Mario can break right through steel chains just by flexing his stomach!

But most impressively, Super Mario once grabbed a rampaging dinosaur (that, compared to a T-Rex, would weigh 48,000 lb), spun the beast around so fast, it turned into a living helicopter blade, and sent it flying into outer space! We do get a shot of it leaving the atmosphere, and it ends up next to a satellite seen earlier in the episode, so, assuming the Mushroom Planet is the size of Earth and measuring directly, that dinosaur would have flown around 35,000 miles in just a few seconds! The amount of explosive force that would be required to do anything NEAR that would be well over _4,000 Megatons of TNT_.

But it's not like Mario's never done anything impressive in his normal state.

 _As Mario and Luigi debate whether or not to go into an inn in the middle of the woods, Bowser and his children watch from a screen._

" _The jig's up!" one of them shouts. "They know it's a trap!"_

 _Bowser snorts. "Mark my words! They're tired, hungry, and, best of all, lost. This cozy little bungalow is just too tempting for a snoopy pair like the Mario Bros. And it's unlocked, which makes it irresistible!"_

 _Immediately after he says this, through the screen, they hear Mario speak. "Wait, Luigi. We may be tired, lost, and, worst of all, hungry, but we must keep our wits about us. There's something strange about this place…my gut feeling is that it's a trap! C'mon – let's get out of here!"_

 _Bowser stares at the screen, speechless._

He's destroyed spaceships with a single kick, crushed castles by jumping on them too many times, obliterated a building-sized robot with one move, and once just _picked up and threw an entire castle_. He tossed around a 43-ton boulder without any form of struggle, dug straight through solid stone at a rate of 15 feet per second with plastic spoons, and has sent Bowser flying over three miles away with just a kick! He's dodged seven laser beams (not plasma blasts, actual lasers) at once, moved faster than superhuman eyes can track dozens of times, ran all the way from Giant Land to Water Land (a distance of, looking at the manga's overhead shot, around 1,200 miles) in under one minute, and swam the entirety of the Mediterranean Sea and back in less than an hour! He's survived being frozen into a block of ice, battling a massive space station that was actually alive, jumping into the mouth of a giant eel to clean its teeth, and even atmospheric reentry, all with no problems! I mean, the guy is fast enough to dodge light-speed attacks every darn day, strong enough to shatter meteoroids with a single Ground Pound, and powerful enough to flap his arms so hard, it forcefully pushes him up into the air with enough lift to carry five people, literally flying across a giant gap and coming to a perfectly smooth landing on the other side! What in the-

With just a spin attack, just one, he shattered this monolith ice crystal. Given its shape, color, and temperature of the surrounding area, chances are pretty good of it being Blue Ice, which has a PSI of 57,000. This crystal was several times larger than Mario, and to shatter the whole thing in one go must have taken around _1.3 Megatons of Force_! And hey, remember that castle that he picked up and threw? By measuring it directly with Mario from the inside and reshaping it to fit the castle's exterior, that thing could have weighed as much as 280,000 Tons! Jeez! Even more impressive is the time Mouser was lobbing bombs around the place, and one of them exploded with enough force to send a 5,500 ton boulder nearly 20,000 feet high – that would take an explosive force of over 221 kilotons of TNT – and later on, Mario and Luigi just took a point-blank blast from a bomb from the same bag and just kind of…looked surprised. It takes a lot to put this guy down.

With an arsenal bigger than Henry Stickmin's and all that ridiculous power, Mario's done more impressive things than the majority of Comic Book Superheroes. Not only does he defeat incredibly powerful beings like Bowser and Kamek every week, but he's also defeated opponents who are even more powerful, like Culex, Cackeletta, Smithy, and King Boo. Culex was so powerful, by the way, he states that he could destroy the entire world! He's saved both the Mushroom World and the "Real World" hundreds, maybe thousands of times, been crowned King of Cramalot, survived being turned to stone, survived being hit literally _across the planet_ , and even trained the legendary Hercufleas, who, yes, is just Hercules with a slightly altered name because it's a dumb cartoon. He fought a whole battle against Giant Bowser inside a black hole (oh, yeah, Mario isn't even fazed by black holes) – and won, and, during a fight against Koopzilla (a mutated version of Bowser), the two almost destroyed all of Tokyo. Or, well, Sayonara, as it's called in the Mario world, but make no mistake, it's definitely Tokyo. In Super Mario Isshun-boshi, Mario was able to defeat Bowser and send him literally running off crying despite being only _a single inch tall_. And when Mario did finally kick the bucket, he, for some reason, went to Hell, and once there, he just…killed Satan and escaped! No joke!

His strength of will and stamina is great enough to take being tortured and waterboarded for days on end and act like it didn't even happen. He can even go several hours without blinking if he thinks it's necessary for his survival. He's saved the entire universe from terrible threats over a dozen times, freed no less than seven alien races from galactic tyranny, and once found out that Bowser had built a Death Star and was going to destroy their entire planet in thirty minutes. In an effort to stop the device, Mario was thrown down a garbage disposal, compressed into a garbage pod, launched into an abandoned wasteland, fought an evil cactus and a giant snake, tamed the snake, rode it to the main warbase, warned them, devised a strategy to defeat the Death Star, got in a fighter ship, flew through dozens of opposing ships millions of kilometers in outer space, flew inside the thing, blew the whole place up, and cleared the explosion - all in under thirty minutes.

WHAT THE HOLY MOTHER OF SERIOUSLY IN ALL THE CRAP. WHAT.

So, needless to say, Mario's just a little bit overpowered. Hey. The guy's been in over 200 video games, starred in four TV Shows, a variety of TV Specials, and, like, thirty years of comics and manga. It's not his fault.

But what is his fault is how…surprisingly stupid he is. Once, after Bowser went missing, he and Peach were invited to an empire they'd _never heard of_ to attend an " _orphan charity spaghetti dinner_ ," (because that's obviously not a trap) which, when they arrived, _happened_ to have a plumbing problem _only_ Mario and Luigi could fix… _in the dungeon_. And they bought _every word_. Even after being outright told they were about to be captured, it still took several seconds for Mario to realize he'd been tricked. Even though he is capable of coming up with strategic plans on the fly, they rarely work, and more often than not, just blow up in his face. Due in part to this, he's become rash, and generally doesn't think things through before a battle. He has a killer superiority complex, been captured multiple times, and doesn't have a perfect winning streak. He's been defeated by many foes, including Bowser and Kamek. He's also lost battles to Peach, Mega Man, Ridley, and Luigi – the latter of which Mario has outright admitted he can't win against. Yeah, I was surprised, too. And powerful enough magic will override any magical protection he'll receive from Star Power. Oh, yeah, and his pool of Star Power is finite and takes forever to charge back up. He only has enough to last him a couple of hours, so after that, he has to rely on his pure skill and physical abilities.

Also, though it's no fault of his, Mario suffers from having a fanbase that overhypes and overscales every single feat possible. No, creating earthquakes is not the same thing as warping reality! And he didn't run around the entire planet in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Mario does this exactly twice in the game, both times as a form of attack or defense. However, with the game's background (for goodness' sake, the moon is there and doesn't change position!), it's clear they were running around the same areas this whole time – and at the end of both attacks, the screen blacks out and Mario and Luigi just appear where they were at the start. That in no way, shape, or form, says that he can run around the world in seventeen seconds. Oh, and there's a "scaling" thing where people are saying Bowser is MFTL+ (AND THEREFORE EVERYONE IS) because he shot Starship Mario with some fireballs, and that starship can move across galaxies, but that's…just stupid. No other Mario character has ever displayed that level of speed anywhere else, anytime else, and the ship could have, you know…BEEN STANDING STILL?! Also, it doesn't actually move that fast! Play the game sometime! It makes portals to get where it needs to go! And, again, Mario defeating people powered by Power Stars does not make him able to destroy solar systems. Hey, even if those Power Stars did make you that powerful, Mario was powered by Power Stars during that whole game, so why even count any of it?! And that Mario Party 6 Black Hole outracing thing is clearly a case of gameplay over lore. You can't swim in space, the black hole only lasted about a minute, nothing but the players are affected, and I sincerely doubt Toadette can move faster than light. And even though he did survive being hit by one of Kamek's blasts that sent him flying into another galaxy, it's unlikely he did so by himself. Immediately after being blasted, a Luma begins chasing after him, clearly wanting to catch up to him, and seeing as Lumas can protect their hosts from dark magic attacks and Mario has never shown this kind of durability before or after, it's more than likely that this Luma used his powers to stop the blast from killing him. And it's not like he rammed into the planetoid he ended up on – hitting it at those speeds would have destroyed the whole thing, and it doesn't have a scratch on it. And while Mario and Luigi beating the constellation-level Dreamy Bowser is impressive, it's far less so than many make it out to be. Mario and Luigi were specifically protected from the Dream Stone's powers by Peach's Heart Powers, and thus they were basically just fighting a way better Bowser, not a constellation-level Bowser. To top all this off, he didn't survive the destruction of the universe or a supernova at the end of Super Mario Galaxy. The universe was reformed and recreated by the power of the Lumas, and they clearly teleported Mario somewhere else while that was going on. You can't tell me that every freaking Toad on the planet can survive the destruction of the universe.

And finally, for one last actual weakness, it's called "Super Mario Bros." for a reason. While both have had many adventures on their own, Mario is only at his best when Luigi's at his side. Together, the brothers are unstoppable. Alone, they're slightly less unstoppable.

But only slightly. Regardless of any deficiencies in worldly knowledge or strategic planning, Mario is an excellent puzzle-solver, and is able to find ways to take out even the toughest of foes. Mario has fought a greater variety of opponents than any other video game hero in the history of the medium - no matter how powerful or how weak his foe is, he will always rise to the occasion and be the true hero who saved all of gaming all those years ago. No challenge, no foe, no puzzle, no quest, no game, nothing has ever been too much for him.

Mario may be the most important character in video game history.

 _After listening to a Big Boo spill its feelings out and talk about his tragic childhood, Mario pats the ghost on the shoulder. "There now. I understand why you have pent-up frustrations, but you can't let those bullies control your life."_

 _He stands up and spreads out his arms. "Why, there's a great big world out there! And as big as the Earth seems, it's just a speck of dust in the universe. Beyond our galactic system are more stars…billions and billions of stars! Troubles of humans and ghosts seem trivial compared to the vastness of the universe."_

 _The Big Boo opens its eyes, tears welled up. Mario shakes his ghostly hand. "Now, don't you feel better?"_

 _Mario leaves the ghost house, having not defeated a single foe, but instead having made a hundred friends._

 **Mario:**

Name: Mario Mario

Species: Homo Nintendonus

Height: 5'1/155 cm

Weight: 220 lb/100 kg

Age: 120+

Occupation: Plumber, Doctor, Dancer, Construction Worker, Referee, Psycho-Therapist, SO MANY MORE

Favorite Food: Spaghetti

Dated an alien

Hates eggs

Is actually another version of King Arthur. No, I'm not kidding.

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Senses

Magical Plumbing

Animal Communication

Star Power

Firebrand

Shapeshifting

The Ability to Transform Toilet Brushes into Zippers

Materialization

Superhuman Stamina

Extensive Breath-Holding

Adaptability

Superhuman Dancing

Superhuman Longevity:

Dimensional Storage

Jumps

~Triple Jump

~Backflip

~Side Somersault

~Spin Jump

~Handstand

~Super Jump Punch

~Wall Jump

~Long Jump

~Ground Pound

~Ground Pound Jump

Super Mario

~White Firebrand

~Air Walking

~Doesn't need oxygen

~Increase in all stats

 **Armor:**

Mario's Hat

A-OK Wear

DX POW Gloves

DX POW Boots

 **Weapons:**

Ultra Hammer

F.L.U.D.D.

Koopa Shells

Super Scope

Plungers

Golden Plumber's Helper

Lightplunger

Spin Drill

Cannon Box

Piranha Plant

Karubi's Shoe

Excalibur

Grid Gavel

Flannel Phenom

 **Power-Ups:**

Super Mushroom

Super Star

Rainbow Star

Cape Feather

Blue Koopa Shell

Mini Mushroom

Mega Mushroom

Boo Mushroom

Spring Mushroom

Red Star

Propeller Mushroom

Frog Suit

Penguin Suit

Cloud Flower

Rock Mushroom

Boomerang Flower

P-Acorn

Super Bell

Double Cherry

Power Balloon

Power Flower

Carrot

Super Flower

Hammer Suit

Tanooki Leaf

Tanooki Suit

Statue Leaf

P-Wing

Fire Flower

Bee Mushroom

Super Acorn

P-Acorn

Wing Cap

Metal Cap

Vanish Cap

Luigi Cap

Wario Cap

Invincibility Leaf

Lucky Bell

Gold Flower

EVEN MORE

 **Feats:**

Destroyed Bowser's entire kingdom in less than fifteen minutes

Defeated all seven Koopalings at once

Defeated the Lord of Lightning

Slapped a 500 lb Bob-Omb about 1.5 miles into the air at speeds of 3,000 MPH

Strong enough to easily bend and break steel bars

Lifted 78 Ton King Bob-Omb

Held back a blow from a 31,137 ton robot with his bare hands

Ground-pounded meteoroids into oblivion

Picked up and threw a 46 ton boulder like it was nothing

Destroyed incredibly powerful robots with just a jump

Destroyed spaceships and even entire castles with just a few jumps and kicks

Easily holds up the 6.4 ton Snack Attack Luigi

Threw Bowser great distances

Kicked Bowser miles into the air

Reduced Gobblegut to dust

Shattered a giant ice crystal with one spin attack

Picked up and threw a 280,000 ton castle

Outran flowing lava

Outran an avalanche

Outran a soundwave unleashed by Bowser

Ran between two kingdoms in around a minute

Outraced several explosions

Also outran an artificial lightning bolt

Dodged blast of pure electricity

Dodged a radio wave attack

Dodged a literal burst of sunlight

Dodged seven lasers at once

Survived being frozen into a block of ice

Survived a blow that sent him to the other side of the planet

Withstood the Lord of Lightning's lightning breath, temperatures of 53,540 Degrees Fahrenheit

Fought a battle inside a black hole, wasn't affected

Fell to the planet's surface from space

Was hit by a Bob-Omb that blew up with 221,079.41 Tons of TNT

Was barely dazed after a 35,000 foot fall via warp pipe

Survived a massive explosion worth 84 kilotons of TNT

Defeated entire armies on several occasions

Flapped his arms hard enough to fly

Met Mark Twain, Frankenstein, Godzilla, Inspector Gadget, Crocodile Dundee, Dracula, Elvis Presley, Shabba-Do, Harry Blackstone Jr.

Reversed the flow of the Fountain of Youth

Can catch and fight invisible foes

Once ate 44 plates of spaghetti in one sitting

Destroyed a robot that could supposedly wipe out all life on the planet

Twirled a dinosaur, sent it into outer space

Defeats Bowser every week or so

Saved an entire alien race seven times

Was waterboarded for several minutes, and acted like it didn't even happen

Breathed on Bowser so hard, he was sent flying backward through a stone wall

Survived being crushed by a castle

Fought a battle in the middle of a star

Fought a battle inside a black hole

Has held more than twenty-four occupations

Plays over a dozen sports

Wielded planetoids as weapons

Survived the Vacuum of Space

Fought and destroyed entire armies single-handedly multiple times

Defeated Culex, earning the title of The World's Strongest Knight

Deemed worthy to use both The Golden Plunger and Excalibur

Crowned King of Cramalot

Trained Hercufleas, The Mushroom Planet equivalent to the Hercules of legend

Killed Demons

Defeated foes both Invincible and All-Powerful – with outside help

Somehow managed to survive being one of the most prominent characters on the CD-I

Jumped 20,000 feet into the air

Saved the President of the United States's life before even graduating from Plumber's Academy

Outplumbered the greatest plumber of all time

Dug straight through stone at 15 feet per second with plastic spoons

Did a bunch of stuff in 30 Minutes

Defeats Kamek all the time, one of the most powerful magicians, just ever

Escaped hell after dying

Defeats Donkey Kong all the time

Easily smashes through brick and metal alike

In a battle against Koopzilla, the two almost destroyed Sayonara

Spat a Goomba with enough force to knock out nine other enemies

Survived being turned to stone

 **Weaknesses:**

Not bright

Plans don't work

Rash, generally doesn't think things through

Superiority Complex

Has been captured multiple times

Heavy weakness to light and heat – without his cap, even harsh sunlight can kill him

Not as good without his bro

Was defeated by Donkey Kong, when Donkey Kong was four

Claims he can't beat Luigi

Defeated by Bowser fourteen times

Defeated in battle by Princess Peach

Knocked out by Mega Man

Star Power has limits

Always hungry

Power-Ups don't last

Super State has a time limit

…

 **Sonic:**

 _A poster flies in the wind, a picture of Sonic on the front. As a child picks it up and reads it, some words are shown on the poster in Sonic's own handwriting._

" _Don't just sit there and waste your precious time. When you want to do something, do it right away. Do it when you can. It's the only way to live a life without regrets."_

In 1987, the world of video games had changed. What was once a hip fad was turning into an industry, with one reason at the center: Mario. Rising from the ashes of the industry's previous mistakes, Super Mario Bros. took the world by storm and restored faith in the medium. Some companies didn't realize this and jumped ship when they could. Some companies started to realize this and wanted a piece of the pie. And some companies…just wanted to sell some games.

Sega was a fledgling video game company that had decidedly endured the crash of the industry. They were constantly insistent that if they could just make one big title, the world would rise again and they'd be hailed as heroes. Then a former playing card company entered the picture and did everything they'd been trying to and more. Naturally pretty miffed, Sega realized that it was doomed to be wiped from the market if it didn't do something, and fast. Nintendo had already released many big-name games and has nearly rebuilt the medium all by itself in just two years. Sega couldn't hope to reach something like that. That's when they realized something: there was only one way for an ant to get the attention of a giant. To bite it.

With the Super Nintendo Entertainment System coming soon, Sega launched the Sega Genesis, a high-powered home console capable of things the NES couldn't even dream of. At a cheaper price and with better hardware than even the SNES, they should have taken a large chunk of the market – but they didn't. Nintendo was too well-known, the people were too well-loved, and Mario games were just too good. Sega then launched its primary campaign – insulting Nintendo at every turn, and proving that their system was the superior one. Thus began the console wars. The playground arguments. The families that sided with one or the other. Nintendo had Donkey Kong Country, A Link to the Past, and Chrono Trigger, but Sega had Mortal Kombat, Toejam and Earl, and Gunstar Heroes. Sega did what Nintendon't – advertise religiously, appeal to the teenage and college camps, and not be afraid to stick up for themselves. Nintendo was well-known, but Sega piggybacked on that, draining away at their popularity like a vampire. Nintendo's people were well-loved, so Sega ruined them and displayed how much better their people were. And, for the biggest hurdle of all, they created a mascot who represented freedom, fun, and the ability to get over any hurdle at superhuman speeds.

Sonic the Hedgehog was created for one reason – to kill Mario.

And that's how this whole debate started.

But in the games, themselves, how was Sonic made? Was he a normal hedgehog who was mutated by an evil scientist's experiments? Was he a fictional character who came to life after a test pilot's accident? Was he a member of a royal family who was forced into hiding with his brother and sister as a baby? Was he born from the Chaos Force to stop the villainous Dr. Eggman? The truth is, nobody really knows. And it doesn't really matter. Sonic's purpose is to fight for freedom, his true love his having fun, and he'll risk the world's safety just for some entertainment – and the universe's safety to help a friend. That's what matters, because that's who he is. Sonic has the uncanny ability to make anyone into a friend – a bullied nine-year-old fox who loves machines, a pink-haired stalker who risks her life for anyone, a red echidna who originally just wanted to kill him, a naïve rabbit and her chao best friend, a paranoid badger who lives in a mud hut, and even a darkened hedgehog whose entire personality is based on pain, loss, – and the refusal to make friends. Together, the lot of them are capable of taking on any threat to the planet – or any bowling league.

Sonic is a fun-loving hedgehog with a big ego and a bigger heart.

 _Percy looks up at the blue hedgehog that had stopped to help her. "Are you-"_

 _Sonic wastes no time in an answer. "Yep. I'm Sonic the Hedgehog, fastest hero in the world, purveyor of justice, righter of wrongs, eater of chili dogs." He spreads his hands out in a not-so-humble manner._

And, being a freedom fighter above almost anything else, he's the one everyone calls to stop Dr. Eggman, a balding scientist who traps animals in robots in order to…somehow help him take over the world. And Sonic is more than capable of defeating him and his armies every time. His thing is speed. Sure, he has incredible levels of strength and is virtually unkillable, but his speed is what he always focuses on and what makes it almost impossible to defeat him. And holy crap, is he fast. His hypersonic speeds have garnered attention and numbers of around 6,700 MPH, but he's proven his worth by going several steps beyond that number. He's run between continents in mere minutes, moved faster than enhanced robotic eyes can see on a casual basis, and outsped a rocket car during a race to such an extent, he moved faster than the eye could track in order to cross the finish line well ahead of the car, danced a while, jumped up to the camera, took several pictures, and then went back in order to make the race seem like a tie. Wow. Just wow. More impressively, while waiting on a chess move from Knuckles, he decided to run around the surface of the spaceship he was in. By following his trail, approximating the size, and dividing by time, Sonic must have been moving a bare minimum of 16,000 MPH. And even that speaks nothing of his full potential, which we'll get to soon enough.

Sonic's fighting style is based off of capoeira (a martial art that uses distraction and surprise strikes to be unpredictable), taekwondo (fast and deadly kicks), and…breakdancing. He's combined all three of these into his own personal martial art that, through pure speed and unpredictability, has proven itself against nearly any opponent. He's also mastered a martial art known as Linshao Kung Fu. This martial art is so difficult to learn that the founder and sole teacher of the fighting style couldn't find anyone on the planet capable of handling it. And Sonic mastered it in two days! What makes it so dangerous is that it's dedicated almost entirely to speedy and precise strikes – making a proper master capable of handling any superior fighter just by dodging their moves and hitting a couple of points on their bodies. With his own fighting style, Sonic has proven himself against technically superior fighters, including the likes of Espio, Rouge, and even Emerl, who had the programmed martial arts of almost every major Sonic character – including Sonic!

Sonic doesn't just use pure martial arts, though. He mixes his own specialty moves into them to make for an even more unpredictable and deadly fighting style. His trademark technique is the Spin Dash, where he curls up into a spiky ball of pain and zooms ahead at breakneck speeds. He can also curl up to use the Spin Attack and Homing Attack, where he zooms ahead and delivers a powerful blow to all foes in the vicinity, one at a time. With the Boost, he becomes a living projectile of pain, with the Light Speed Dash, he can go from 700 MPH to the speed of light in a microsecond, and, by charging the Spin Dash longer, he can perform the Super Spin Dash, which is basically a mix of a Spin Dash and a Boost. It has shorter range but is much more powerful – capable of one-shotting castle-sized robots. While he used to require a ring in order to perform this move, these days he can do it on a whim.

This dude has a lot more that's superhuman about him, though, He can reach outer space with a single jump, utilize windshears as projectiles, and whip up entire tornadoes with just a kick! Also, thanks to the Chaos Force (trust me, we are so going to talk about that later), he can throw out multiple miniature chaos projectiles that explode upon impact. He can also vibrate his molecules to incredible speeds, kick-starting their regenerative properties in order to heal his wounds, or turning invisible. He can even vibrate them fast enough to become intangible and pass through solid objects! His kinetic energy is so powerful, things will sometimes explode just by being nearby him, and he can cause dozens of robots to explode just by running past them – or run around them so fast, the heated kinetic energy in the air forces them to melt into a puddle and sets Sonic completely on fire so hot that it can _also_ melt metal! Heck, he's powered up entire windmill farms just by jumping past them! And his senses are so good, he can fight on par with even invisible enemies or hear a gunshot _on the other side of the world_. How? HOW? He's also a surprisingly good strategist for someone who always comes in fists swinging. He's proven many times that he can defeat virtually any foe even when there's only one possible way to do so, and has been able to pinpoint even really specific and strange weaknesses in just a couple of minutes.

 _As he and Metal Sonic literally butt heads, both attempting to shove the other back, Sonic tells his clone exactly what he thinks of his robotic move-predicting clone._

" _You might know everything I'm going to do, but that's not going to help you since I know everything YOU'RE going to do! STRANGE, ISN'T IT?!"_

With all that skill, Sonic has done many…many crazy things. With a single Spin Dash, he barreled straight through three building-sized robots, destroying them all with one blow. He's killed dozens of mythical creatures, and even robotic mythical creatures! Over his years of battling Eggman and protecting the world, he's destroyed hundreds, no, thousands, of incredibly powerful robots. He's even one-shotted a giant robot that could level skyscrapers by backhanding them! He's survived dozens of explosions capable of destroying buildings, skyscrapers, and even castles, and his skin is so tough, even freaking lightsabers don't hurt him! No, I'm not kidding – Eggman invented lightsabers and used one in a battle against Sonic, and Sonic just took a bunch of hits from it and knocked out Eggman with a single Spin Attack, then blew up Eggman's base and just ran out with no visible damage whatsoever.

He's defeated his fair share of powerful foes, including Sticks, Amy, and Knuckles all at the same time! He constantly defeats his more powerful robot clone, Metal Sonic, and even beat Perfect Chaos, a being powered by pure Chaos Energy who could wipe out a city in one attack. He's taken out a massive robot that literally consumes satellites, destroyed Eggman's entire Egg Armada in less than three minutes, and annihilated half of the United Nation's armed forces in five. He's killed the crap out of a dragon a hundred times bigger than him, held off an entire robotic invasion while also delivering fast food, knocked over a 5,000 ton duck robot by elbowing it, and his Spin Dash is powerful enough to drill through the entire planet in a matter of seconds! For that matter, his Boost can force a giant near-unbreakable robot over five hundred feet backwards, and his Super Spin Dash can drill through a magical alien ice that's directly stated to be harder than diamond. Given the size of the hole and the speed with which it was dug, doing so would have taken around 8,120,000 tons of force! He commonly defeats Shadow, who can knock out the entire rest of Team Sonic at once in less than five minutes, and a single clash between the two of them obliterated an entire city block! Another clash between him and Metal Sonic lopped off a massive chunk of a mountain that (estimated by ScrewAttack and, as always, double-checked by yours truly) would take around 200 kilotons of TNT to do.

And all of this was without any of his specialty equipment or power-ups.

Let's get to power-ups first. With the Fire power, he can throw fireballs, with Ice, he can throw ice balls that freeze foes solid, and with Lightning he zaps his enemies with electricity. He uses the Illusion power-up to magically distort his opponent's vision, the Rocket Shows to fly for a few seconds, the Pogo Spring to reach new heights with his jumps, and the Invincibility power-up to become completely invulnerable for about 20 seconds. Touching a normal foe in this state will instantly kill it. He also has several shields that perform different functions. His normal Blue Shield deflects projectiles and can take one hit before popping. Every other shield he owns has these properties, as well. Such as the Red Shield, which protects from heat, the Bubble Shield, which lets him breathe underwater, the Heart Shield, which damages nearby enemies, and the Yellow Shield, which protects against electricity, gives Sonic a magnetic field, and allows a mid-air double-jump.

He also can utilize Hyper-Go-On, a magical energy source produced by aliens called Wisps, to transform into a variety of forms. With Cyan, he turns into an actual laser beam, moving at the speed of light and bouncing off of reflective surfaces, with Yellow, he turns into a massive drill that can go through mountains in seconds, with Purple, he becomes…Arcade Pac-Man, basically, and with Ivory, he turns into living electricity, able to manipulate other forms of electrical energy and travel through them like they were thin air. Indigo makes him into a miniature planet, Violet makes him a miniature black hole, and Orange makes him a miniature rocket. Finally, with Red, he can manipulate fire and form a variety of fiery attacks and even create massive explosions.

Aside from all those power-ups, he wears several pieces of specialized equipment for the sole purpose of making him even more powerful. He wears the Golden Gloves, which increases his strength by 37.5% and his durability by 14.3%. The Flame Ring makes him even stronger, the Ancient Light allows him to sense all foes in the vicinity, and the Immunity Idol is a charm he holds that grants immunity from any and all status effects. Being poisoned, slowed, frozen, stopped in time, OHKO'd, frozen, cursed, and so on are all impossible.

And while he's worn many different pairs of shoes over the years, his best are undoubtedly the Custom Shoes. Not only are they capable of sustaining his insane speeds without any kind of effect, but they can be equipped with several different gems to grant supernatural abilities to Sonic. He can only have one equipped at a time, but can switch between any of them on a whim, so it doesn't matter all that much. The Sky Gem gives Sonic a gem that he can throw and teleport to instantly, the White Gem allows him to hover in mid-air, and the Blue Gem doubles his already insane speeds. More powerful is the Red Gem, which slows down time for the whole world except for Sonic for however long Sonic wishes. The Purple Gem reduces Sonic to the size of thimble while somehow retaining strength, speed, and durability AND allows him to jump…forever! He can infinitely jump off of absolutely nothing, reaching anywhere, given enough time. But perhaps his best gem is the Yellow Gem. You know those shields we talked about earlier? Well, with this gem, he can get one…whenever he wants. Seriously. Someone hits the shield and breaks it, and Sonic just summons a new one instantly. This makes him virtually invincible in combat – though a fast enough opponent can still get through it and it is a little difficult to land his own blows with it up.

As far as weapons go, he holds several different kinds of bombs, including heat-seeking missiles and landmines. He also wields a duplicate of Amy's Piko Piko Hammer, which he uses to smash _meteors_ out of the sky, some supersticky glue (not kidding), a wristwatch that he can use for wireless communication and to _feed off of the gravity of the surrounding area,_ an Enerbeam (which is basically a grappling hook made out of kinetic energy), and a mech suit developed by an ancient civilization. This suit can nearly match the asteroid-busting Knuckles in strength, has an energy shield that's practically indestructible, has launchable fists, a barrage of missiles, a powerful laser beam, and can even fly!

But his most powerful weapon he's ever wielded is Excalibur. This magical sword that, yes, is supposedly the same Excalibur from long ago (but is actually quite a bit better) cloaks Sonic in golden armor and has its fair share of neat powers. Not only is it sentient, but it's unbreakable, can create forcefields, deflect and counter magic, absorb his foes' powers, slow down time, and is directly stated as being able to cut through anything. With this weapon at his side, Sonic defeated the Dark Queen, who was powerful enough to destroy the entire planet!

But hey, even without equipment, Sonic's proven himself exceptionally well. Particularly with his speed. You've gotten a taste of what he can do already, but this blue hedgehog's limits go far beyond what we've already stated. Now, Sonic's speed is somewhat controversial, so we've decided to exclusively go with the numbers we get from measuring his feats, and, just to be sure our general numbers are accurate, I've calculated no less than SEVENTY-EIGHT different well-known speed feats just for base form Sonic WITHOUT any extra equipment! And the result? Well…um, he's fast, but in patterns. It's strange, but all of his feats seem to land squarely in one of three categories. You'll see what I mean.

Let's show off a few of these feats. You've already seen the slow ones, so let's go to some of the more interesting bits. One day, Eggman was feeling bad about losing to Sonic all the time, so he slowed down time to a near-halt to give himself plenty of time to beat Sonic in something before the end of the year - and even though characters like the supersonic Amy were almost completely frozen, Sonic remained relatively unaffected. Even a laser beam was ridiculously slow in this timeframe! Similar lasers throughout the show moved at around 400 MPH, and this one, judging from our one close-up shot, took a full second to move just two and a half inches! This feat, in particular, indicates a speed decrease of 15,644.4x, and Sonic was still able to move at around 20 MPH while dancing, meaning that in normal speed, he should be able to move at around 313,000 MPH! But this is hardly the only time he's shown speed like that. He's run so fast that time itself seems to stop several times. During one of these instances, he moved about thirteen meters in, judging from the flap of this butterfly's wings, 1/12000th of a second – putting his speed at 350,000 MPH. Another time, he went to go get some berries on the other side of his home island, reached the spot, and ran all the way back with the berries in tow in just half a second! When he was forced to move at normal human speeds, it took him _two days_ to reach that spot, even though he started from a far closer location! Sure, he took several breaks and got lost once, but even if we lowball that distance to be 25 miles away, that still puts Sonic's speed at 360,000 MPH. During a battle against Chaos, he jumped up seriously high into the sky and zoomed around so fast, he looked like a full-on lightning storm. The aerosphere is approximately 2 miles off the ground, so by measuring these bolts of light, their distance from each other and the ground and approximating the path of least resistance, stacking them and dividing by the time it took to move that far, Sonic must have been moving at least 370,800 MPH! And one time, he ran around Mobius in just four seconds flat – since Mobius (Sonic's planet) is just a future/alternate version of Earth (depending on the timeline), it must be the same size as Earth. That puts Sonic's speed at 374,000 MPH.

So, yeah. A pretty big leap from 16,000 MPH – and I didn't even mention like, sixteen feats that all land around 350,000 MPH! But that's just the second category. Do you want to know how fast he goes in the third consistent speed category?

Do you really?

One time, Sonic decided he wanted to play Santa and, in under an hour, delivered millions of presents across the globe. In the process, he ran around the entire globe no less than fifteen times in two seconds! That measures out at 672,327,000 MPH – just barely faster than the _speed of light_. And that's not all. He outran a literal laser beam from Metal Sonic (which does canonically move at light speed), outran the pull of four different black holes, outran a Cyan Wisp Laser (which, again, moves at light speed), moved so fast that Espio's ninja senses couldn't sense him approaching (and they can literally sense the movements of sunlight) and once outright outran a beam of sunlight and _his own shadow_. Oh, and to defeat a massive impossibly-powerful robot, he grabbed a wire, jumped up into the clouds, and caught a lightning bolt in the wire, which then harnessed the electricity (which again, moves at the speed of light) and it began travelling through the wire. And Sonic just dropped the wire, ran to the other end of the wire, and wrapped it around the robot, all before electricity had even made it halfway through!

So, yes, Sonic is very definitely faster than light. Seventeen separate feats in unrelated scenarios can't be just discounted off-hand because you don't want to believe it. Oh, yeah, and in case you're still skeptical, the canonical Super Interactive Annual 2014 Book labels him as faster than light in base form. So there's that.

There is somewhat of a legitimate explanation for those three categories, I suppose. See, Sonic is ridiculously cocky and will almost always hold back just to make this more fun for himself. So, what's he capable of when he totally lets loose? Well, some pretty scary things. You remember Metal Sonic, a robot clone of Sonic designed to surpass him in every way? Well, Sonic outmatches that thing anyway all the time, which should be impossible. I mean, you'd think that this guy's own nemesis would know his limitations, right? But apparently Sonic was just _holding back that entire time_. Oh, and then there was the time he found two of his best friends captured and about to be tortured. And then this happened.

 _Two sleek Metarex robots, one gold and one silver, stand in front of Sonic and Black Narcissus._

" _It is time for the experiment," Black Narcissus declares. "These two Metarex were designed by me especially for this occasion. Gold will test your strength, and Silver, your speed."_

 _Sonic grows angrier by the moment as Black Narcissus drawls on. "I based my Metarex's designs on data that was collected during previous battles against you. I'm eager to see if they're powerful enough to defeat you!"_

 _Head still bent, knees still on the floor, Sonic turns to look at Black Narcissus with maniacal laughter in his eyes. "All right then," he replies, chuckling. "Let's test them out!"_

 _Suddenly he vanishes and the silver robot is sliced straight through the middle, and then blown to pieces by an invisible force. The golden robot recoils in fear, but before it can move, something faster than any of them can see hits him with over a dozen blows. He, too, is turned to scraps. Both robots have been destroyed in less than three seconds._

 _From the smoke, something speaks._

 _"Looks like you'll have to go back to the drawing board!"_

And no, he didn't use a transformation to do that – he's never shown that infamous "Dark Sonic" form anywhere else, anytime else, many characters from the show assumed similarly dark auras when angry, and his and Eggman's conversation afterwards heavily implies Sonic was just angry. It was just an animation technique. But it does show just how powerful Sonic can get when he lets loose.

And just because that wasn't a transformation doesn't mean Sonic doesn't transform. The guy's had several superpowered forms over the years, but let's stick to the best ones. Sonic the Werehog trades out speed for incredible strength and stretchy limbs – but Sonic kinda lost that form after defeating the mountain-sized deity Dark Gaia. He can, however, become Darkspine Sonic by equipping three of the crazy-powerful World Rings. Darkspine Sonic can fly, has enhanced physical abilities, and pyrokinetic abilities. He can also slow down his perception of time to improve his reactions and activate an additional magical mode that doubles his speed. He used this form to defeat a magical genie that had gained insane powers from fictional worlds – enough power to warp reality at his whim! But Darkspine Sonic was able to grab his most powerful attack and just send it flying back at him form sheer strength alone! Though it should be noted that Darkspine Sonic could also warp _that specific reality_ , and therefore his powers could have countered the genie's.

But that hardly matters, because Darkspine Sonic is nowhere near as powerful as Sonic's true ultimate form.

Only achievable through usage of the Chaos Emeralds (magical emeralds that act as doorways to the all-powerful Chaos Force), Sonic's golden Super State wields power beyond anything he could have previously done. By harnessing his own essence as an embodiment of chaos and using the positive energy of the Chaos Emeralds, he achieves the legendary form of Super Sonic.

Super Sonic can fly, is unbelievably strong, virtually impossible to defeat, and has abilities that put all his others to shame. Hey, you know the Egg Carrier? This massive battleship of destruction marks the pinnacle of Eggman's design capability. Basically impossible to harm and the size of a city, it holds legions of armed forces and enough firepower to cause cataclys-

Super Sonic destroyed the whole thing with a one move.

One move.

Super Sonic is strong enough to move the mountain-sized Dark Gaia nearly 100,000 feet backwards with one attack, fast enough to travel between planets in seconds, and durable enough to take the full force of the falling Space Colony ARK while Shadow was busy having PTSD. According to Eggman, if this moon-sized space station hit Earth/Mobius at the speeds it was going at, it would smash the planet to pieces. This means that Super Sonic was able to take the full brunt of around 53 Quadrillion Megatons of Force – and not only resist it, but push it back! In a battle against Super Shadow, the two's clashes created a massive anomaly similar to a black hole, and when they worked together, they could destroy a planetoid that had absorbed the full power of the Master Emerald and millions of planet eggs (each of which holds the energy of an entire planet). This living planet was so powerful, it was capable of destroying all life in the galaxy! And even it was no match against the combined might of Super Sonic and Super Shadow. Super Sonic alone has defeated insanely powerful beings, some of which were considered deities. This includes the Nega Mother Wisp (which, by scaling through tunnel vision, was a quarter the size of the Earth), a massive robot that had absorbed the power of six chaos emeralds (Sonic destroyed that one within a couple of seconds), Ultimate G-merl (the most powerful robot in the galaxy), the Time Eater (who could warp and destroy the fabric of space-time) and he one-shotted the incredibly powerful Imperiator Ix, even after Ix activated his own Super State via the Master Emerald! Alongside other Super State users, he's killed the Sun God Solaris, and the shapeshifting ability-stealing Metal Overlord.

And his Super Form comes with a boatload of awesome powers! He can unleash a powerful kamehameha-like blast of Chaos Energy, heal others, create energy shields, and with attacks like the Super Sonic Boost and Arrow of Light, he moves so fast, even gods can't see him! Best of all, though, is Chaos Control. Since the Chaos Force is interwoven in space-time, controlling it with the Chaos Force allows Sonic to…well, control space-time. He can teleport vast distances, make himself physically more powerful be enhancing his blows, pull a broken planet back together, and even slow down time – or just stop it entirely for nineteen straight seconds. And while this form used to come with a time limit of less than a minute, he's used it for three days straight with no ill effects. It has been defeated once or twice before to the likes of Dark Oak and Chaosbot, but both eventually fell to its might later anyway.

But even that's not Sonic's most powerful form.

The Master Emerald holds just as much power as the seven Chaos Emeralds combined and controls them all, limiting their power output when necessary. When their power output is no longer limited, they become Super Emeralds, and utilizing them transforms Sonic into Hyper Sonic. Hyper Sonic is immensely powerful, capable of tearing holes in space-time, and is supposedly better than Super Sonic in every category. He's also completely invulnerable and has a move called Hyper Flash, which unleashes a burst of Chaos Energy that strikes everywhere he sees and kills whatever it touches instantly. Obviously, Hyper Sonic is OP as crap – though the time limit returns in this form. Sonic can't even last a full minute in it without a steady supply of rings. Still, when he comes out of either Super or Hyper form, he's completely refreshed and healed up, so even if he runs out of time, he still gets a recharge.

And it's not like he's not impressive when he's not in a Super State. Even in base form, he's fast enough to cross into other dimensions, strong enough to obliterate massive battleships, and tough enough to take the full force of the Egg Carrier's front-loaded cannon (which can, at the very least, wipe out a city block) without a scratch! He survived a beating by the reality-warping Infinite, a point-blank explosion from a giant Eggman-made bomb, and being punched dozens of times and fully beaten up by a robot with the power of six Chaos Emeralds. That bomb one was particularly impressive, since Eggman stated it was more powerful than any bomb he'd ever made, which had to include the missile he launched in Sonic Adventure, which was powerful enough to destroy the entirety of Station Square. Station Square has a population of around 3 Million, and is based off of real-life New York City, so we can assume the two are of similar sizes. The amount of explosive energy require to destroy all of New York City measures out at 628 kilotons of TNT – and that bomb Sonic survived has to be more powerful than that.

Sonic's willpower alone is powerful enough to make him almost totally immune to mind dominance, and his strength is great enough to effortlessly tie knots in the cannons of tanks. He's survived dozens of blows by a meteor-sized monster, being impaled several times, and having a castle collapse on top of him. He even shook off a blow containing the full power of the seven Chaos Emeralds and was struck by six anti-aircraft missiles at once and acted like it didn't even happen. Oh, and let's not forget about the three separate times he's entered into a black hole and wasn't affected in the least. He's tossed cars miles into the air, knocked over a massive sandstone golem with one kick, and matched and surpassed the strength of the E-18 Robot, which was not only a hundred times his size and made of metal, but was also powered by two Chaos Emeralds. So, yeah. He's proven fast enough not just to outrun lasers, but to dodge hundreds of them at once – dozens of times! He's defeated Knuckles, Amy, Rouge, Omega, Silver – aw, heck, just name a random Sonic character and chances are pretty good that Sonic's wrecked them at least once.

But most impressively, he fought Ultimate Emerl. You may remember that regular Emerl had the combined skills and martial arts of every main Sonic character. However, Ultimate Emerl was the fully ascended form of this robot, and not only held the skill of every major Sonic character, but also their strength, speed, durability, and superpowers – plus all seven Chaos Emeralds, the energy from a few supernovas, and over 4,000 years of war data and abilities stacked on top of all of that! Ultimate Emerl effortlessly defeated the majority of Sonic's team and smashed the Master Emerald to pieces with a single blow. _And Sonic defeated him in less than thirty seconds._

WHAT. HOW. I DON'T EVEN…HOW?!

So, it sounds like Sonic's unbeatable, right? Well, almost. Sonic has his fair share of issues that can be exploited by smarter opponents, which is how Eggman's still able to stay in the game despite being nowhere near Sonic's level of power. He's ridiculously cocky, easily distracted, fairly impulsive, an enormous show-off, and loves to pick a fight – he literally spends all day just waiting for Eggman to attack, and will bargain the safety of the world just to get some action in his life when cooped up for too long. He's been defeated before, including by Infinite, Shadow, and Knuckles, even though those last two are certainly below his power level – just because he didn't take them seriously. Heck, he was even outright killed by a single attack from Mephiles! Also, his speed is everything to him – and there are ways to counter it. He has his fair share of trouble with slippery surfaces, and without his shoes to contain his movement's energy, his own frictional force will kill him. Also, if you can break his legs, well, he ain't going to be running too fast. But, strangely enough, his biggest weakness is water. Pools, lakes, rivers, oceans, any of those will do the trick. For some weird reason, even though every once in a while he can run over water, the vast majority of the time he sinks like a stone even at full speed, and can't escape no matter what he does. Yeah, he can breathe in space, but not underwater. None of that makes sense, but it's all true. Maybe his connection to the Chaos Force has given him a huge weakness against water or something, but Shadow, who has a way deeper connection to the Chaos Force, _can_ swim, so…there's no real explanation.

Also, though it's no fault of his own, Sonic suffers from having a fanbase that overestimates and overhypes every feat he has. Just because the screen cut to black doesn't mean everything previous happened in less than a second! That makes no sense! Super Sonic isn't omniversal in speed because he can beat up Time Eater, who could POTENTIALLY destroy a universe by SPECIFICALLY destroying space-time. And Solaris isn't omnipotent – the only reason he stood so much of a threat to the multiverse was because he existed outside of time, and was therefore theoretically able to get the timeline to collapse entirely, and since time and space are intertwined, that would destroy the multiverse. It's a specific power, not "destroy the universe with one punch cause he's so strong." And Metal Sonic flying from Little Planet to Mobius doesn't make him hundreds of times faster than light. Little Planet is at least 1/10th the size of our moon, and appears 23x bigger than the moon in the background of Sonic 4 Episode II. Therefore, to cross that distance in 17 seconds, Metal was moving at 220,000 MPH. No more. Sonic didn't run to the edge of the universe in Sonic & the Secret Rings – he ran fast enough break the dimensional barrier and cross over to his dimension. He's done that before, so why not here? And that SPD thing with the Light Speed Dash is clearly a case of gameplay over lore. If Sonic was really consistently moving at 7.6x the speed of light, he'd have crossed the planets hundreds of times in far less time than it takes to complete one level. Hey, even that feat of beating Ultimate Emerl doesn't mean he can destroy stars – it just means he's technically capable of beating someone who can.

And, finally, there's a reason Sonic formed a team. He makes many mistakes, and is often reliant on his friends to help him out of situations he can't work himself out of. Without them, he's always at a slight disadvantage.

But only a slight one. Sonic has lived up to his claim of being the fastest thing alive many times over, and has proven his skill, power, and dedication to freedom and all that deserves it with every chance he's gotten. Sonic will not be held to any predetermined destiny – in fact, even though he was made to topple Mario, the two have become friends on equal footing. Sonic won't let anybody, not even his own creators, stand in the way of freedom. Mario may have created the video game industry, but it was Sonic who made sure it lasted.

Few stand a chance against the hero of everyone who fights for what they believe in.

 _Sir Percival lands gracefully in front of Sonic and holds her sword out to challenge him. "I am Percival, Knight of the Round Table, Servant of King Arthur." She narrows her eyes. "State your name and your master, sir!"_

 _Sonic holds his blade out to his right. "I'm Sonic! Sonic the Hedgehog!" He matches her eyes with his own unyielding gaze. "I have no master, except the wind that blows free!"_

 **Sonic:**

Name: Sonic the Hedgehog

Species: Hedgehog (Mutated via Chaos Force)

Height: 3'3"/100 cm

Weight: 77 lb/35 kg

Age: Typically 16

Occupation: Freedom Fighter, Policeman, Knight of the Wind

Favorite Food: Chili Dogs

Dated a human

Master surfer/surfboarder

Formed three bands

Is actually another version of King Arthur. No, I'm not kidding.

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Senses

Animal Communication

Chaos Force

Chaos Projectiles

Can breathe in space

Superhuman Stamina

Adaptability

Dimensional Storage

Superhuman Jumping

Aerokinesis

Resistance to Mental Manipulation

Darkspine Sonic

~Pyrokinesis

~Boost in stats

~Storybook Reality Warping

~Flight

~Speed Break

~Time Break

Super Sonic

~Flight

~Chaos Blast

~Boost all stats

~Healing Others

~Chaos Control

~Arrow of Light

~Deflect

~Chaos Regeneration

~Turbo Boost

~Super Sonic Spinning

~Super Sonic Boost

~Invisible Eye Blasts

Hyper Sonic

~Everything Super Sonic Has++

~Hyper Flash

 **Armor:**

Golden Gloves

Immunity Idol

Speedy Sneakers

Flame Ring

Magic Gloves

Ancient Light

Custom Shoes

~Green Gem

~Red Gem

~Blue Gem

~Purple Gem

~Sky Gem

~White Gem

~Yellow Gem

~Light Chip

~Antigravity

 **Weapons:**

Blue Ark of the Cosmos

Enerbeam

Landmines

Piko Piko Hammer

Bombs

Supersticky Glue

Self-Propelled Bombs

Ancient Mech Suit

Speed Star

Blue Force One

Excalibur

 **Power-Ups:**

Hyper-Go-On

~Cyan

~Yellow

~Indigo

~Purple

~Violet

~Red

~Ivory

Fire

Ice

Illusion

Lightning

Invincibility

Pogo Spring

Rocket Shoes

Shields

~Blue

~Yellow

~Red

~Heart

~Bubble

 **Feats:**

Destroyed thousands of incredibly powerful robots

Killed a dragon a hundred times his size with absolute ease

Defeated Ultimate Emerl

Won races against Metal Sonic

Defeated Eggman's Egg Armada in less than three minutes

Dodged hundreds of laser blasts at once many times

Melted a robot by running around it

Ran fast enough to cause earthquakes

Defeated Perfect Chaos in base form

Destroyed four castle-sized robots with one spin dash

In a battle with Metal Sonic, chopped off chunk of mountain

Pulverized a space robot that was big enough and powerful enough to literally eat satellites

One-shotted a giant battleship well over 1000x his size

Casually outruns Bullet Trains, Jets, and Rockets

Kicked Eggman's pod beyond the horizon, many many times

Kicked a castle-sized robot beyond the horizon

Cut through four giant trees at once just by spinning his legs around nearby them

Matched and defeated Shadow many times

With Knuckles, blocked an energy ray capable of setting off a world-destroying event

Ran faster than the concept of time

Destroyed half of the United Nation's entire air fleet in under a minute

Defeated Knuckles, Amy, and Sticks at the same time

Held off a robotic invasion while delivering fast food

After being tortured for months, he broke out and was more powerful than ever

Got swallowed by a 2,000 ton snake, killed it from within

Ran around a lake fast enough to separate the water at an atomic level

Drilled through ice harder than diamond

Casually entered and raced around inside a black hole

Had a castle collapse on top of him

Shakes off falls from outer space like they were nothing

Was struck by six anti-aircraft missiles at once and came out unscathed

Frozen into a block of ice and was fine

Survived several blows from a fully-powered Eggsterminator  
Survived Eggman N-101 Missile

Survived Eggman's most powerful bomb  
With Shadow, defeated Metarex Scarship

Survived 42,000,000 Megaton explosion of Scarship

Survived a beatdown by five of his most powerful foes at once

Matched and surpassed the strength of the E-18 Robot, which was not only a hundred times his size and made of metal, but was also powered by two Chaos Emeralds

Kicked a 2-ton car 23 ft into the air effortlessly

Effortlessly tears apart steel robots

Knocked down a 5000 ton sandstone golem with one kick

Knocked down a massive duck robot with an elbow

Grabbed the barrel of a STS tank and tied a knot in it with zero effort

Effortlessly matched the strength of Super Metal Sonic

Regular running speed is 3000 spd, which is 6711 MPH.

Reached space with one leap

Outran a wisp that literally transformed into a laser beam

Covered almost every square foot of North America in under 12 hours in search for a location on a poster

Outmatched the power of the essence of all evil

Survived bombardment by meteors

Outran a black hole's pull four times

Outran literal beams of sunlight

Outran his own shadow

Moved faster than Espio could track

Took fifteen laps around the planet is two seconds

Outraced a bolt of pure electricity

Outran a literal laser fired by Metal Sonic

Dodged gunfire from an army

Saved everyone who lived on and/or worked on Prison Island in less than a minute

Literally runs fast enough to enter other dimensions and planes of reality

Ran to grab some berries in a distant location, got them, and made it back in about half a second

Ran around his home planet in four seconds

Ran so fast time seemed to stop entirely

Dropped his Chili Dog and destroyed several robots and grabbed it before it hit the floor

Moved fast enough to look like a lightning storm

 **Feats (Super Sonic):**

Defeated Time Eater, who consumes timelines

Defeated several other Super State users

Defeated Metal Overlord alongside Hyper Knuckles and Super Tails

Defeated Final Hazard alongside Super Shadow

Defeated Ultimate G-merl

Defeated Solaris with Super Shadow and Super Silver

Defeated Dark Gaia

Defeated the Nega Mother Wisp

Teleported a moon-sized Space Colony ARK w/ Super Shadow

Knocked Perfect Dark Gaia back 100,000 feet

Obliterated a battleship with one hit

Caught a blow from the Eggsterminator's building-sized arm with one hand and smashed the whole robot to pieces in a nuclear-sized explosion

Destroyed Eggman's entire Egg Fleet in less than a minute

Held back the falling Space Colony ARK

With Super Shadow, destroyed planetoid that could wipe out all life in the galaxy

 **Weaknesses:**

Super cocky

Huge show-off

Impulsive

Easily Distracted

Loves danger

Water is a serious danger

Defeated by Shadow

Defeated by Knuckles

Defeated by Infinite

Killed by Mephiles

Several feats have not been accomplished alone

Requires his shoes to manage the frictional force he creates – without them, he can't go super fast, or his own kinetic energy will destroy him

Doesn't do slippery surfaces

Break his legs, and he can't run

Super State has time limit

Hyper State has far worse time limit

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate _once and for all_. It's time…for a Death Battle!

…

On an empty field in the middle of the Mushroom Kingdom, a Warp Pipe sprouted out of the ground. With a mighty leap and a "Yahoo!" Mario burst out from the pipe and landed in the grass as the Warp Pipe descended once more. There were a few seconds of delay before the air began to vibrate rapidly, and with a powerful burst in the dimensional fabric, Sonic raced through to this land, and stopped about ten feet from Mario.

Sonic crossed his arms. "So, we're finally settling this once and for all?"

Mario cracked his knuckles. "Right here, right now." He dug a 1-Up Mushroom out of his dimensional storage space and threw it to Sonic, who caught it mid-air with one hand. "Don't worry about yourself; I've got plenty."

Sonic put the 1-Up Mushroom into his own dimensional space. "Oh, trust me, plumber. You're going to need this one."

Mario entered a boxer's classic fighting stance while Sonic rested his arms behind his head. "We'll see about that."

Mario and Sonic both raced ahead, Mario readying a powerful punch and Sonic readying a powerful kick.

 **-FIGHT!-**

The punch and kick connected, creating a shockwave that shoved both combatants back. Sonic raced ahead again and dove into a homing attack at Mario, who backflipped out of the way and dove down halfway through, setting himself on fire and barreling into Sonic. Sonic took the advantage to grab Mario's overalls and headbutt him backwards, then followed it up with an instant barrage of kicks. Mario was knocked back and unleashed several ultra-fast punches, each of which Sonic countered with ease. Mario jumped backwards and threw out dozens of fireballs, but Sonic was too fast for them. He deftly dodged every single one of them with a smile. Mario threw out dozens more and then dozens of Koopa Shells at Sonic. "Dodge those!" 

"Why would I do that?" Sonic called out casually. His shoes suddenly switched colors to yellow and a yellow shield appeared around him. Every projectile hit the shield and bounced off instantly. Sonic dove ahead, but Mario activated the Tanooki Suit and flew into the air before turning into a statue and falling back down to the ground. Sonic Spin Dashed out of the way, but Mario turned back instantly after hitting the floor and tail-whipped the shield away. Before Sonic could reactivate the shield, Mario activated the Super Flower and lobbed several into Sonic's shield as it was going up. The magic balls bounced around constantly inside the shield, striking Sonic several times before he finally switched to the Sky Gem. Mario pulled out the Super Scope and unleashed several blasts of plasma at Sonic, but Sonic thought fast and threw the gem into the air, then teleported to it before any of the blasts could hit him. He activated the powers of the Red Wisp and unleashed an explosion of fire at Mario, knocking him over and ridding him of his power-up, and then hit the Super Scope with several homing attacks until it was warped to the point of uselessness.

Sonic threw out several fireballs at Mario, who countered with his own and then powered up and unleashed a massive fireball attack several times his size. The attack coated Sonic in flames…until he burst through it wearing the Red Shield. Sonic used the Boost attack to ram into Mario several times until Mario used his Penguin Suit to throw out several ice balls. The first ball broke the shield and the second struck Sonic, freezing him solid – for about half a second before the Immunity Idol kicked in and the ice shattered. Sonic shot forward with a Boost as Mario did a belly-slide, and both rammed into each other at breakneck speeds. Both went flying back in pain, with Mario's Penguin Suit vanishing.

"Let's see if you can keep up with this!" Sonic shouted out. He pressed a button on his wristwatch, and a massive mech suit suddenly fell from the sky and landed next to him. Sonic hopped inside instantly, and the mech closed off and launched several missiles at Mario. Mario jumped up a hundred feet into the air and pulled out the Flannel Phenom. As he fell, he closed one eye and fired a bust of energy into the robot – that promptly bounced off of its shield. Mario fell back to the ground and Sonic unleashed a powerful laser beam, moving at the speed of light, and yet Mario saw it coming and long-jumped right over it and towards the mech. He pulled out his Ultra Hammer and began bashing away at the shield, but it just wouldn't break. The mech jumped up and belly-slammed Mario into the dirt. When it got up, Mario was surprised and dazed – but not defeated. He backflipped out of the pit and dodged a blow from the mech. The mech quickly followed it up by launching a fist at Mario, which struck him full force and sent him careening away. Mario leaped high into the air, ready to ground pound the giant machine, but Sonic activated its jets and caught up with him in the air. The giant mech reached heights above Mario and elbowed him into the ground with enough force to create a massive crater. Mario stumbled and tried to get up while stunned. Sonic flew back down to the ground. "Let's finish this!" He slammed one of the robot's fists at Mario, full-force.

Who caught it with one open hand.

Sonic pushed forward on the control stick, but the mech just stopped at Mario's unyielding hand. Mario turned towards Sonic and glared, then grasped the machine's hand in his own and threw it over his shoulder. As the mech went flying backwards, Mario long-jumped over to it in mid-air, summoned his Ultra Hammer, and slammed it down into the mech, sending it down to the ground with a massive burst of energy. Mario pounded away at the thing's forcefield, forcing the whole mech further and further into the ground, until the forcefield finally crackled and fizzled out. Instantly, Sonic activated its jets and flew up out of Mario's reach – only for Mario to take a mighty thousand-foot jump, have the Grid Gavel materialize in his hand, and strike the mech with it. The electronic surge from the Grid Gavel entered into the mech's systems and shut the whole thing down. Sonic leaped out of the mech as it fell, useless, and used the Yellow Wisp power to transform into a massive drill that slammed through the air towards Mario, who countered with his own Spin Drill. The two drills fought for dominance for a bit before Sonic suddenly dropped out of the transformation and spin dashed his way to the ground as the Spin Drill sailed overhead. Mario fell to the floor and went flying forward with the Spin Drill, but Sonic effortlessly dodged the blow, jumping over the drill and grabbing Mario out from behind it. The Spin Drill continued without them and dug itself a pit in the ground.

Sonic released several quick strikes that hit Mario from all sides without him being able to predict where they came from. In desperation, Mario pulled out his lightplunger and held it out to the side. He closed his eyes, endured the next few blows, and focused.

There.

He spun around and caught Sonic in the lightplunger's blade, wracking him with electricity. With a cry of pain, Sonic fell to the ground, and then barely dodged Mario's next swing. He zoomed away and then forward again at speeds faster than light while Mario focused his eyes, keeping perfect track of Sonic's movements. As Sonic rushed at him, he swung the lightplunger, but then Sonic wasn't there. No, wait he, was, but he'd transformed into…oh. Crap.

Sonic burst into a mass of electricity and zoomed ahead. The moment the electricity-based lightplunger connected with him, he used it as a conduit and traveled through it, reaching into Mario's body, shocking him horribly inside and out. He popped out of the other side and transformed back to normal. He grinned and turned around, expecting to see a pile of ashes, but Mario was completely fine. Mario turned around to face Sonic once more.

Sonic shrugged. "Let me guess. Special armor?"

"Next to pasta, there's nothing better for a battle."

"Yeah, well," Sonic dashed ahead at the speed of light and kicked the lightplunger out of Mario's hands, "it doesn't matter."

Sonic curled up and Spin Attacked several times, but each time Mario barely dodged his blows. Mario transformed into Hammer Mario and threw out hundreds of powerful hammers at Sonic, who pulled out his own Piko Piko Hammer and knocked several out of the air, then scattered the rest with a temporary tornado created by a kick. As the tornado dissipated, Mario jumped through the air at Sonic using his Ultra Hammer. The two hammers traded blows several times, but Mario's skill with the weapon was able to keep up with Sonic's speed and he began forcing Sonic backwards.

Sonic dashed to the side and spun his hammer around fast enough to form a massive tornado that came flying at Mario – who simply jumped through the vortex without being affected in the slightest and slammed the Ultra Hammer down into Sonic's skull. Sonic fell to the ground, head pounding, and instantly threw his gem into the air, teleporting out of the way of the next several hammer blows. He switched to Blue and zoomed ahead, moving faster than Mario could react. Mario slammed his hammer around like crazy, trying to catch Sonic off-guard, but Sonic saw his movements in complete slow-motion and easily dodged all of his attempts to hit him. Sonic dashed forward at Mario, ready to tear right through him with his sheer speed. Mario, apparently, predicted he'd try this and used a Rainbow Star, making himself invincible. Sonic slammed into Mario – and was sent flying away, burned. He blinked a few times, surprised – and thankful that the Immunity Idol had protected him from further harm. He went at Mario again, and this time activated his own Invincibility to keep up with Mario's. The two went into another hand-to-hand fight, with Mario's skill and strength being tested against Sonic's unpredictability and speed. The two equaled each other until Mario unleashed a sudden Kung Fu-styled move with the back of a Plunger. Sonic was sent hurtling backwards, some sort of pressure point struck.

Mario pulled out another plunger and prepared for Sonic to zoom back. Both of their invincibility had worn off, not like it had mattered that much. Sonic dashed ahead, and Mario jumped over him, and as he stopped short and went after Mario with a kick, Mario blocked the kick with one plunger and jabbed Sonic in the throat with the other. As Sonic gagged, Mario dove forward and unleashed several Kung-Fu styled moves with his plungers. Sonic dodged several, but was hit by enough to get him reeling in surprise pain. Okay, that was enough of whatever fighting style this was. As soon as another plunger headed towards him, Sonic grabbed it and karate-chopped it into oblivion. Mario and Sonic stood about ten feet apart once more, this time both in classic Kung-Fu fighting positions. As they leapt at each other, Sonic brought up a leg and Mario, an arm. The two hit each other at the same time and battled with Plumb Fu and Linshao Kung Fu, with each blow exactly countering the other.

Mario activated the Cape Feather and flew up high into the air, but Sonic mentally locked onto him and smashed into him with a Spin Attack, knocking him out of the sky and out of the Cape Mario form. Mario activated the Cloud Flower and formed a platform before he hit the ground. He jumped over Sonic and slammed down with a ground pound. Sonic dashed out of the way well ahead of time, but Mario was counting on this. He dove out of the ground pound and pulled out F.L.U.D.D., which he used in Turbo Mode to burst ahead at fast enough speed to land a hit on Sonic with his Ultra Hammer. Sonic went flying into the horizon with a cry. There was silence for a short while and then…

"YOU FOOL! I'LL CRUSH YOU LIKE AN INSECT!"

Sonic burst into view, sporting two white lines on his head and coated in flames. He flew up into the air. Darkspine Sonic was ready to end this.

Darkspine Sonic launched himself at Mario moving at incredible speeds, while Mario jumped at him using the Turbo Nozzle and then launched himself high into the air with the Rocket Nozzle. He dove down at Darkspine Sonic. "Let's put those flames out!"

"Mario," F.L.U.D.D. warned him, "you are running low on water! I recommend a new plan of attack."

"I have a plan!" Mario informed his backpack, miffed.

"Is it to atta-"

"It's to attack!"

F.L.U.D.D. sighed.

Mario slammed towards Darkspine Sonic at hypersonic speeds and unleashed a torrent of water at him right before hitting him. Not to be deterred, Darkspine unleashed his own torrent of flames. The flames and the water hit each other in mid-air, neither overpowering the other, and filled the area with steam.

F.L.U.D.D. sputtered. "Mario! You are almost out of-"

"Scattershot!" Mario shouted.

F.L.U.D.D. obeyed. The scattershot of water used up all that was left, but cleared a spot for a wicked dive-bomb. As Mario fell to the earth, he burst through the wall of steam and, mere feet away from Darkspine Sonic, transformed into Lucky Cat Mario. "Gotcha!" He transformed into an invincible statue and landed squarely – in front of Darkspine Sonic. Sonic hovered in the air and waited for Mario to pop out of the statue.

"Well, that must be embarrassing."

Mario unleashed several fireballs at him and slashed at him with his claws several times, but Darkspine Sonic focused and saw the world far slower than it actually was. He saw every single blow coming and exactly what he had to do to avoid the attack. He dodged every blow with absolute ease. Mario charged up his ultimate fireball of death attack once more and launched it, but Darkspine Sonic just grabbed the fireball and threw it back at Mario. Mario jumped over it and dove at Darkspine Sonic with his deadly claws, but Darkspine Sonic quickly just threw out a stream of fire. The fire struck Mario full force without warning, knocking him out of Lucky Cat form and leaving him singed and surprised. Darkspine threw out some more pillars of flame, and Mario desperately tried to avoid all of them, panicked. Darkspine Sonic thought this was strange, but his mind was too drunk on anger to figure out why. He dove forward at twice the speed of light, but Mario transformed into Metal Mario and caught him without any form of damage. With a solid punch, he knocked Darkspine Sonic away, and then jumped at him once more, ground pounding him into the ground. Darkspine Sonic cried out in shock and pain – and Mario noticed three rings on one of his hands. Three rings that hadn't been there before. Hmm. As the Metal Mario form wore off, he forcefully pulled the rings off, and sure enough, Darkspine Sonic transformed back into normal Sonic, dazed and woozy.

"You transformed! That's cheating," Mario grumbled.

Sonic got up and held his head in his hand. "Cheating?! You transform, like, every ten seconds!"

"Those are power-ups!"

"So are mine!" Sonic shook his head. "Um, can we take a break? My head-"

Mario struck him across the forehead with the Ultra Hammer, knocking him to the ground.

Sonic grit his teeth. "So that's how it is, huh?" He vibrated his molecules, healing his wounds and turning him invisible. "Try hitting me now, plumber!"

"Okey-dokey." Mario ran forward – and gut-punched the invisible Sonic into the air. "Let's make this a fair fight!" He equipped the Vanish Cap, turning invisible and intangible.

Sonic was surprised that Mario was able to sense him so well, but he probably shouldn't have been. Mario's skills had surprised him many times before. They weren't going to save him this time, though – Sonic knew exactly where he was, and how to avoid him until this thing wore off. Mario threw out several attacks, and Sonic dodged every one of them by scooting his body forwards or backwards to the exact point it needed to be. "So, you can see me?"

"More or less. You?"

"Yeah. How about we ditch this whole shtick before it gets even more boring than this already is?"

Mario popped into view again. "Boring? Come on, this is fun!"

"Normally, I love a good fight," Sonic replied coolly, "but a movie's no fun if you know the ending." He set his eyes and stepped forward, ready to continue.

But Mario wasn't so ready. "But haven't you seen Ninja Ski Pirates on Haunted Mountain like, two hundred times?"

"It…what…no…" Sonic shook his head in disbelief. "It's called smack talk! Or quipping. Eh, maybe it's both. Anyway, it's better than 'So long, gay Bowser!'"

"KING!" Mario shouted back. "It's 'So long, KING Bowser!' If I'd known everyone misheard it, I would've stopped saying it years ago!"

"Really? You didn't ever wonder why everyone stopped and looked confused every single time you said it?"

"We're done with this!"

But Sonic wasn't done with this. "I mean, even Luigi heard it wrong. I bet he's held that over you for-"

"This coming from Mr. 'I'm _waaaiting_!'"

"I was a kid!" Sonic protested. "Do you and Luigi still do that dumb 'Pasta Power Patty Cake' thing?"

"As a matter of fact, we do!" Mario declared. "And it's not dumb! It inspires us and allows us to share our power in order to-"

"No, no," Sonic stopped him, hands spread out. "I think it's cool. At least," he snickered, "as cool as fighting King Goo Goo Ga Ga Koopa."

"He was going through a phase!"

"Was the Masked Masher of Mayhem a phase, too?"

Mario shook his head. "I still think that name sounded good." He grinned maliciously. " _Strange, isn't it?_ "

Sonic laughed. "We've done a lot. Seen a lot. Fought a lot." He got back into fighting position. "Let's put that to good use."

"Gotta go fast to keep up with me," Mario informed Sonic with a wink. He bent his knees and activated the Red Star.

The two rammed ahead once more.

As they were about to clash for the third time, Mario took to the skies, flipping through the air and streaming blue particles from his every movement. Sonic jumped up in the air to Spin Attack him, but Mario dodged to the left quickly. Sonic tried again, and again, and Mario kept dodging, eventually having to refresh his flight with the P-Wing. Sonic activated the Blue Gem and dashed into the air, then activated the White Gem and hovered while charging his Super Spin Attack. Seeing him do this, Mario flew high up into the air and landed on a cloud before switching to the Blue Shell. He tucked up in the shell and began spinning it rapidly. Soon, both had finished. Sonic switched to Blue again, and then the two dashed at each other with the power of several nuclear warheads.

When the two connected, the sheer impact of the force created a massive shockwave that decimated the land and destroyed a mountain in the distance. They were both thrown back with incredible amounts of force and slammed into the freshly-turned earth dizzied and damaged. Mario wasted no time, activating the Boomerang Flower and throwing four boomerangs at Sonic – who caught all four with a simple flip. Mario transformed with the P-Acorn and went soaring into the air. Sonic activated the Purple Gem and shrunk instantly, and right away began infinitely jumping his way up to Mario. The two jumped with near-equal speed, and when he realized he wasn't going to catch Mario, Sonic switched to White and threw out his Enerbeam, grasping Mario's leg and forcefully pulling him down. Mario fell to his level, surprised – and Sonic punched him. Right in the face.

His power-up gone, Mario fell to the ground with enough impact to make a small crater, and then stood up unaffected. "Hey, you know what they say," he shouted out while pulling out a Mega Mushroom. "Go big or go to…Disneyland. Something like that!" He began growing until he was the size of a mountain.

Sonic looked up at him, unfazed. "Eh. Knowing you, you'd end up somewhere like Pastaland."

"DON'T TEASE ME ABOUT PLACES THAT DON'T EXIST!" Mario shouted, launching a blow and catching Sonic by surprise. "IT MAKES ME HUNGRY _AND_ UPSET!"

Sonic was driven even further into the ground and got up bruised. "Wah-what-"

Mario provided an answer in the form of a dozen more punches, knocking Sonic all around the air before finishing it off with a body-slam into the side of a cliff. He picked up the limp Sonic. "You can't race around," he declared, "without legs." With a snap and a gut-wrenching cry into the air, Sonic's legs were broken. "You're finished." He threw the hedgehog into the ground and prepared to stomp on him.

Only for his massive foot to be suddenly stopped.

"What? Pepperoni and Cheeseballs, what's going on?!"

He tumbled over onto the ground with enough force to cause an earthquake, and saw Sonic holding one of his toes. One. Sonic spoke four words.

"Now I'll show you!"

Sonic's eyes shone brightly and the seven Chaos Emeralds appeared in a circle around his waist. Two of them were already glowing – he'd used some of their power to prevent his death and overpower this goliath. They all spun rapidly, faster and faster, until Sonic let go of the now-shrinking Mario and rocketed upwards. The glow of the Emeralds died out as the glow around Sonic grew brighter. With a mighty flash of light, Sonic reappeared, golden and glowing with the power of a hundred suns. He cracked the muscles of one hand with just a stretch, and then flipped his broken legs into their normal positions with no sign of pain. His wounds were healed, his power was massive.

He was Super Sonic.

Super Sonic dove down, grabbed Mario, and threw him into the air, then, as he fell back down, punched him into the air with enough force to scatter the clouds. "This is my world. Where one is all. Where every step you take…" he flew up at speeds exceeding light and grabbed Mario by the collar. "Where every step you take meets the next one. Because in my world, life is strong!" He filled his open hand with powerful chaos energy and launched it at Mario.

Mario lifted a hand and grabbed Super Sonic's, absorbing the energy easily. He opened his blackened eyes. "Don't get ahead of yourself. Not all toasters toast toast." He pushed Sonic off himself and, to Sonic's surprise, stayed put in the air. "Some of us toast bread." He showcased a Super Star in his left hand before it cracked and dissipated. Mario glowed with energy and breathed in the smoke from the star. He was surrounding by a blinding aura, and, for a moment, what looked like holy fire. When the transformation was over, he stood mid-air, overalls white and shirt red – a golden aura surrounding him. He glanced around and looked at his hands. "Well, I haven't used this in a long time. Let's see how this works out." He dashed at Super Sonic, who rushed ahead, fist outstretched.

Super Mario stopped just short of Super Sonic's fist. "Before I say goodbye to you, one more last fist bump." He punched ahead and the two's knuckles touched with a blow that leveled everything around them and separated the atmosphere.

Super Sonic pushed himself back. "Singing my songs, now? So that's what you've come to."

Super Mario outstretched his hands in the classic Plumb Fu style. "You love it, don't you? The fighting, the action, the style, the times you have to use your ultimate power-up to save the world? It always seems like the world's full of endless possibilities. Evil doesn't matter. You defeat it because you're the hero. But it's the action evil brings that matters. The ability to have some fun honing your skills and destroying everyone who stands in your way. That's the real you, isn't it?"

Super Sonic rushed at as an arrow of light before being blocked by Super Mario's outstretched arm. "Okay, well, just tell the world, I guess. Yeah, that's me. It's why I'm always so much more powerful than anyone else can be – and you. Why? You want to tell me that you don't and that makes you a better hero and a more convincing role model?" He shook his head and smirked. "Chaos Control!" Time froze everywhere.

But through the time freeze, Super Mario leapt up and matched Super Sonic in a surprise duel of fisticuffs. "No, Sonic. You don't get it." He unleashed a blast of white fire, enveloping Super Sonic in white fire, though it didn't do a thing. "I told you that…" he threw out an uppercut that caught Super Sonic and sent him backwards, "because I feel the same way."

He grabbed Super Sonic and kneed him in the face. "But I have something you don't. I let my enemies live. I let them try to get an advantage. Because that way…" he elbowed Super Sonic down to the Earth and dove down after him, "they get stronger. _And I get stronger with them._ " He Ground Pounded down and hit Super Sonic full force. The resulting crater was nearly a thousand feet deep.

Sonic laughed from under him and teleported a couple of feet away. "Nice speech, kid. But here's a better one. You're going to lose. Do you know why?"

Super Mario narrowed his eyes and held out his hands in a boxing position. "Why?"

"You just admitted it. The real difference that makes this match," Super Sonic informed him casually. "You make yourself stronger to fight your enemies."

"So?!" Mario shouted back, angered. They matched eyes.

"So," said Super Sonic from behind him, "to fight mine, _I make myself weaker._ " Super Sonic elbowed Super Mario into the atmosphere with ease, and then zoomed up to meet the shocked Mario. "Let's take this a step up!" He grabbed Super Mario and tossed him into outer space, and flew up faster than he was flying.

Super Mario found footing on the emptiness of space and Super Sonic lowered himself to meet him. Mario took a quick moment to hook up a breathing device [that he totally 100% had on him the whole time and not only just now because I realized well after this part was done that Mario can't breathe in space on his own] before the two rushed at each other and traded constant blows, with plenty of Chaos Energy and White Fire traded as well. But it was less than a minute before Super Sonic had the edge again. His speed was just too much – Mario desperately needed something to counter it.

"Looks like your ultimate power-up didn't amount to much!" Super Sonic shouted at Super Mario before throwing another kick.

Super Mario caught the kick with both hands. "I might agree with you there – if this was my ultimate power-up."

He shoved Super Sonic back and pulled out his greatest power. The Invincibility Leaf.

And, in flash of energy, he transformed again, becoming White Tanooki Mario.

Super Sonic unleashed what was intended to be dozens of hits – but his hand was burned and his body was shot far and away after the first one connected. "What?!"

White Tanooki Mario leapt through the air/space and flew through it, using his tail to soar like an eagle. A space eagle. A speagle.

Super Sonic zoomed around in a circle to build up energy and bulleted forward, but was knocked back and burned once more by White Tanooki Mario's suit. "That thing…I can't break through it!"

"It's no use!" White Tanooki Mario shouted at Super Sonic. "Unless you're invulnerable, this thing'll win every time!"

"Unless I'm invulnerable, eh?" Super Sonic teleported away, leaving White Tanooki Mario floating in space.

"Hey!" White Tanooki Mario shouted. "No fair!" There were more moments of silence. White Tanooki Mario scratched his head. "So, uh, was that a forfeit?"

Back in his home dimension, Super Sonic spread the Chaos Emeralds out in front of the Master Emerald. "Yo, Master Emerald. I kind of need your power. Is that cool?"

No response.

"Oh, right. The password. Um…oh, man, what is it Knuckles always says. Hmm…'You're my hero, Sonic!' 'I'm a big dumb brute who isn't anywhere near as cool as Sonic!' 'Hey, Eggman! Want the Master Emerald? While don't you take it after you've tricked me into fighting that cool guy Sonic for the hundred-millionth time?'" Super Sonic sighed. "Making fun of Knuckles is a lot less fun when he's not around."

Super Sonic put a hand on the Master Emerald. He closed his eyes and focused – and the words slowly came to him. "The seven Chaos Emeralds are the servers. Chaos is power, enriched by the heart. The controller serves to unify the Chaos. Master Emerald, lend me your power!"

The Chaos Emeralds began to glow again – and this time, brighter than ever. Super Sonic opened his eyes. "Oh, yeah."

White Tanooki Mario sat down on thin air/space and whistled a bit. Where the heck had- Oh, here he was.

Hyper Sonic appeared in front of White Tanooki Mario, flashing all the colors of the rainbow. "So I'm just going to assume you wanted me to be one of those foes who comes back better than ever. 'Cause why else would you tell me how to beat you?"

White Tanooki Mario flew upwards. "This is the most powerful suit ever magically conceived. I don't care what kind of boost in power you have, nothing can match-" he was left literally choking on his words when Hyper Sonic hit him with a gut punch.

"Let's try that again," Hyper Sonic instructed him. He punched White Tanooki Mario in the gut again, and again, and again. He was no longer hurt by the invincible suit. But it didn't look like Mario was hurt by his attacks, either. The two stuck each other with another blow, and then began their classic blow-trading, matching punches and kicks with ease, Hyper Sonic dodging more blows, but White Tanooki Mario counterattacking more. Hyper Sonic grabbed White Tanooki Mario and threw him at a passing asteroid. White Tanooki Mario landed softly and beckoned Hyper Sonic to join him. Huffing, Hyper Sonic teleported away, landing on top of a fireball comet. Grasping the thing with both hands, he shouted "Chaos Control!" and teleported the whole thing to where he and Mario were fighting. Once there, he raised it over his head and hurled the massive fiery meteor at White Tanooki Mario.

White Tanooki Mario panicked. He had to get out of there, and fast! If that much heat hit him – ergh. He flew out at speeds as fast as he could possibly go. He went up, and up, and up, and ultimate the meteor missed him by barely an inch. He breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Hyper Sonic crossed his eyes. Why had he worked so desperately to dodge that attack? The suit was invincible, wasn't it? His eyes suddenly popped as he remembered Mario dodging those pillars of flame when he was Darkspine Sonic. Of course – Mario couldn't handle the heat. Now that he thought about it, he was sure it'd come up in conversation one day – when he'd asked about all the lava Bowser used or something. And he was willing to bet this transformation didn't hold up against heat, either.

Hyper Sonic popped in right in front of White Tanooki Mario. "Hey. Let's go for a ride." He grabbed White Tanooki Mario and teleported right above the sun. He caught White Tanooki Mario in a Spin Dash and dove into the burning star. When the two invincible rivals emerged from the other side, one of them was decidedly less invincible. Hyper Sonic threw Mario back onto the asteroid. "Time to end this, once and for all!" he shouted. As Mario covered his eyes, Hyper Sonic shouted out "HYPER…FLASH!"

A burst of chaos energy exploded around the entire area, coating absolutely everything, including a wailing Mario. When it all cleared, Mario's body had fallen to the asteroid's surface. It was over – the Hyper Flash had killed him. Hyper Sonic shook his head. "I told you you'd lose. Well, time to use that 1-Up."

Hyper Sonic slowly flew over to the asteroid and hovered above Mario's body for a few moments.

A few moments too long.

The suddenly-not-dead Mario jumped up and lunged for Hyper Sonic. He'd survived the instant-kill Hyper Flash thanks to his A-OK Wear, and had been able to take advantage of that perfectly. He grabbed Hyper Sonic's neck and pulled him down. Instantly, he transformed with a Gold Flower and held out his golden glove to Hyper Sonic's shocked face. "And…game." He launched a golden fireball.

There was an explosion and a mass of gold coins. And no sign of Hyper Sonic.

Mario cracked his neck. "Brains win again!"

"They sure do," came a voice form behind him.

Mario whirled around and was caught with a gut punch by Hyper Sonic, which instantly rid him of his power. "Whew. If I hadn't teleported when I did, that might've actually got me. Now, this is over." He held out both his hands and began charging up a power kamehameha. "CHAOS-"

Hyper Sonic ran out of time.

Normal Sonic blinked once. "Aw, crap." He fell down to the asteroid's surface with a thump.

Mario ate a Super Mushroom, restoring his health. He glanced at Sonic, who was standing at the other end of the asteroid. "I don't know about you, but I'm pooped. I've plunged my last clog today."

Sonic nodded. "Yeah, same deal here. I do have one trick left."

"Yeah? Me too. Wanna do that 'strike at the same time with all your power' thing?" He smiled a big, toothy grin. His eyes shone with a spark.

"You know me too well." Sonic grinned and let out a genuine, fun-loving laugh. "Let's do this!"

Sonic pulled out Excalibur and a magical set of golden armor formed itself around him. He held the all-cutting sword out towards Mario.

Mario pulled out Excalibur and transformed into Super Mario once again. He held out the plumber snake to Sonic, and it straightened instantly and reformed itself into an indestructible sword.

The two both took on step forward.

Then two steps.

Then they both raced at each other, at top speed, and, upon reaching the other, poured all of their energy, all of their might, into one decisive, victory-determining blow.

Both dashed right past the other and fell to their knees.

There was a moment of silence.

And then an explosion of blood.

And Mario was cut straight down the middle.

Sonic stood up and sheathed his sword. "Just like I said."

 **-KO!-**

Sonic pulled out his 1-Up Mushroom and threw it onto the two pieces of Mario's lifeless corpse. Instantly, the magic was absorbed and Mario reappeared, good as new in a flash.

"Did…did I lose?"

"Hey, don't sweat it, plumber," Sonic told him. "Like you said, let your enemies grow. We'll fight again sometime."

Mario seemed disappointed. "Yeah…I guess."

"Well," Sonic declared, "I'm starving. Think I'll pick up some Meh Burger Chili Dogs on the way home."

"No, no, no," Mario stopped him. "We agreed. Next time, I'm picking the restaurant. And there's this great new pasta place down in-"

Sonic laughed.

Mario crossed his arms. "What?"

Sonic shook his head. "Nothing. Let's go." He held out a Chaos Emerald. "I think there's a little power left. It'll make the trip faster."

Mario laughed. "Good luck. I'll take a warp pipe. Race you?"

"You know it."

The two went their separate ways, but ended up at the same place later anyway.

…

Agh, crap. How am I going to explain this to all the fanboys – and to myself from six years ago?

Well, I guess the numbers are as good a place to start as any. Let's go Strength, then Speed, and then Durability.

Starting with Strength. While Mario has shown more lifting strength than Sonic (as he's never lifted anything like that 230,000 Ton castle) his advantage ends there. Yeah, I was surprised, too, but Sonic's shown himself to be stronger than Mario at, like, every turn. Mario might have been able to throw that castle a few hundred feet, but Sonic sent a giant robot at least as big as that castle flying into the horizon with just a kick. And since steel is way heavier than concrete and, unlike the castle, that robot wasn't filled with nothing but empty space, it has to be far heavier. Mario could crush another castle that was a little bigger than the first one with two kicks and three jumps, but Sonic barreled through several robots just as big, if not bigger, with one spin dash! Look, his spin dash can barrel through the entire planet – I think he has that piece in the bag. Mario's Spin Attack might hit with 1.3 Megatons of Force, but, given that diamond ice feat, Sonic's Super Spin Dash hits with at least 8 Megatons of Force! And in terms of explosive output, throwing that castle that far would take an explosion worth around 47 Kilotons of TNT at most. Nowhere close to the 200 Kiloton energy output from Sonic and Metal. We can add in all of Mario's strength boosters and even a 30% bonus (because Luigi could do the same thing and Mario is, according to the RPG Games, 30% stronger than Luigi), and that puts Mario's total output possibility at 104 Kilotons of TNT – technically above Sonic's 100 after we divide it in half due to Metal Sonic's involvement, but Sonic moves way past that number the moment we include his extra armor and strength enhancements. The Golden Gloves alone would put his output at over 137 Kilotons. And that's without scaling, which we could totally do, since Sonic's proven himself far stronger than Metal on multiple occasions! You may notice that, for every category, we talked about the castle Mario lifted almost exclusively when it came to his level of strength – which is basically because it's the most impressive strength feat he's ever pulled off in base form. I looked for a better one for days on end, and I just couldn't find one. It's far above what he normally can do, but it still doesn't reach what Sonic can do. And that's bad news for Mario, since strength has always been his biggest advantage in battles against foes who aren't Bowser.

And, of course, Mario never stood a chance in the Speed department. His most impressive feat in base form was running between those two kingdoms, which puts him at around 80,000 MPH. Really fast (nearly ten times faster than he's ever gone at any other point, in fact), but nowhere near Sonic's light speed movements. Do you really need to know just how much faster light is than 80,000 MPH? Over 8000x faster, that's how much. That's more bad news for Mario, since Sonic's fighting style is completely focused on getting in multiple strikes and Mario's is using his strength to knock out his opponents with some well-placed blows. Good luck landing any on a guy who's eight thousand times faster than you. Even Super Mario could only move at 250,000 MPH at absolute most, which is far below even Sonic's second set of speed feats that all land around 350,000 MPH. Mario had a better chance when it came to comparing reaction speed, since he's proven his ability to not only spot, but avoid and even block light speed attacks before. But while he's dodged seven light-speed lasers at once, Sonic has dodged hundreds. Multiple times! Mario has moved super fast and dodged hundreds of bullets mid-flight, but Sonic can do the same with laser-fire that moves way faster. Seriously, Eggman's unleashed dozens of robots with laser-fire gatling guns, and Sonic just runs straight into them, jumping, flipping, and dodging every single laser with pure speed, acrobatics, and by seeing every one of them as if they were in slow-motion. Mario's never done anything like that, and Sonic's performed this feat five separate times in the games alone! Sure, Mario might be able to dodge and block some of Sonic's light-speed attacks, but it's not like he was going to land his own anytime soon. When someone is just that much faster than you, eventually it's going to make a difference. And while some of Mario's powers and equipment give him a mild speed boost, Sonic can always just double his speed with the Blue Gem.

Finally, there's Durability. Now, both can enter into black holes and not be affected, but Mario has that 183% increase as well. So, theoretically, Mario's durability should surpass Sonic's. Theoretically. However, the moment we remove these feats from the equation (which we probably should, since both have been knocked out by things way below black hole-level and their ease of survival could easily be attributed to Star Power negating dark matter and Chaos Force manipulating gravity and reality) Sonic takes this category without much effort. Mario can take a barrage of blows from a 31,000 Ton robot. That's cute. Sonic's endured a similar barrage of hits from a plant monster that would weight almost _two million tons_! Mario can survive hits from Culex, who was powerful enough to break a planet (no, he's not universal, he crosses dimensions using a special ability, and exists outside of time, which is why he can somewhat exist in all timelines at once), but Sonic took plenty of hits during his battle against Ultimate Emerl, whose power was certainly great enough to destroy stars. The Chaos Emerald's energy alone is supposedly strong enough to destroy stars, and Ultimate Emerl had all that plus a great deal more. When it comes to explosions, Sonic also takes the advantage. The most powerful explosion Mario's ever survived without outside help was that 221 Kiloton Bob-Omb, while Sonic survived a bomb that was at least worth 628 Kilotons of TNT. Even adding in the 183% boost puts Mario's durability at 625 Kilotons, which is still below Sonic's. And that's without taking Sonic's durability boosts from his equipment into account!

 **Results:**

Strength (Lifting/Force/Explosive):

Mario: 280,000 Tons/44 Million Tons/104 Kilotons

Sonic: 64,000 Tons/91 Million Tons/137 Kilotons

Speed (Travel/Reaction/Overscaled):

Mario: 94,040 MPH/7 Lasers/1.25x Speed of Light

Sonic: 1,344,654,000 MPH/ 120+ Lasers/7.6x Speed of Light

Durability (Explosive/Scaled/Overscaled):

Mario: 625 Kilotons/Planet+/Constellation+

Sonic: 718 Kilotons/Star+/Galaxy+

So, yeah, Sonic takes it all pretty darn well. And all of that doesn't count his transformations, all of which massively increase his stats. Not even Super Mario can come close to what Super Sonic is capable of. Sure, he can throw a dinosaur into outer space, which would take 4,127,499 Kilotons of TNT – but that was actually pretty darn overestimated. Even taking the scene at face value (which we probably shouldn't, since the Moon in said scene is four times bigger than the planet and curved and has a weird face), it's extremely doubtful that the Mushroom Planet is nearly as big as the Earth. In fact, according to the Super Mario Odyssey map and by measuring both Isle Delfino and the downscaled moon (which is a little bigger than Donkey Kong Island), it's only about 1/20th the size of our planet – though this figure remains extremely inconsistent across canons. Even if we do say that Super Mario can use over four million kilotons of TNT, though, Super Sonic still surpasses that by a great margin. Super Sonic once shoved back Perfect Dark Gaia nearly 100,000 feet. By comparing Sonic to these pillars, these pillars to this large building, this large building to Light Gaia's head, Light Gaia's head to Light Gaia, and Light Gaia to Perfect Dark Gaia, Perfect Dark Gaia measures in at 1,502,140,000 Cubic Feet in volume. Since a cubic foot of ground meat weighs 55 lb, Dark Gaia, who's a giant snake creature without actual organs (being a god), would weigh in at 41,308,790 Tons. It's this massive size, by the way, that we can use to estimate the 100,000 foot distance. The amount of explosive force required to do that would be around 81,550,000 Kilotons of TNT. That's almost _twenty times_ more than Super Mario! And Super Sonic has dealt with beings far larger and far stronger than Dark Gaia. He even knocked around a giant creature a quarter the size of the Earth, and Ultimate G-merl, who was basically the embodiment of if Ultimate Emerl went Super Saiyan! Super Mario's lightning-fast speed is certainly no match for Super Sonic's faster than light speed, and Super Mario's never shown durability like Super Sonic's 53 Quadrillion Megaton feat. Do you really think Super Mario and Super Luigi could have destroyed a planetoid that could destroy all life in the galaxy? Yeah, I doubt it. And Super Sonic isn't even Sonic's most powerful form!

So, then, Sonic takes Strength, Speed, and likely even Durability. What about other categories? I mean, Mario clearly has the superior arsenal. Does he have any other advantages? Well, yes. Mario has more experience than Sonic and has dealt with a wider variety of foes. And…that's it. I guess he knows more martial arts than Sonic does, but Sonic's unique fighting style has proven to be superior to fighters far better trained and more knowledgeable than Mario. Mario's Plumb Fu may be very dangerous, but it doesn't quite stack up to a robot who, exclusively going by the main Sonic cast, knows at least fourteen martial arts. Fourteen. Mario's Plumb Fu was almost defeated just by a Karate Black Belt. And Sonic is perfectly capable of strategizing mid-fight and figuring out Mario's weaknesses, something Mario couldn't really do. When a weakness isn't shown off as a giant red spot, Mario never really figures them out. And if Sonic can figure out that an invincible robot's sole weakness is friggin' volcanic ash or that another invincible robot that feeds off his energy's sole weakness is Sonic running faster than he ever has (not hitting him at those speeds, actually just running at a specific speed will destroy it), I think he can figure out that Mario has problems with hot stuff fairly easily. And Mario's Hat is a far more exploitable weakness than Sonic's shoes or legs. Even if Sonic wasn't way faster than Mario, everyone knows (at least, I hope) that it's way easier to snatch someone's hat off of their head than try to take off their shoes. And while Mario's only had some general army training, a practice course for Firebrand by the Fire God, and a single day of Plumb Fu training from Misaki, Sonic's had no less than six different masters over the years that taught him his incredible skills and how to apply them in combat.

And for as many powers as Mario has, the only ones that would be actually useful in this scenario would be his extremely limited Materialization and Firebrand. And Sonic has Chaos Projectiles to counter the Firebrand for the most part, and his skin's able to resist the heat of a lightsaber. A few fiery attacks aren't going to break this match. And, surprisingly, Sonic's a better jumper than Mario! Mario at his best can reach 20,000 feet into the air, but Sonic's jumped six miles from a standstill, and sometimes reaches outer space with his leaps! Yeah, Sonic takes the advantage in the one big thing Mario is most famous for. And as OP as the A-OK Wear was (it made sure Super Sonic's time manipulation didn't do a thing and its immunity to OHKOs even allowed Mario to survive the Hyper Flash), it was simply outclassed by the sheer variety of abilities granted by the Custom Shoes. Sure, they might not grant extra durability like the A-OK Wear does, but who cares when you have an infinitely respawning shield, can jump forever, hover, teleport, and double your speed whenever you feel like it?! Plus, the Immunity Idol made sure that none of Mario's invincibility power-ups or OHKO moves would work on him. Even if he didn't have it, though, they struggle to deal with creatures far less durable than Sonic, such as Koopalings.

All that leaves is Mario's giant arsenal of weapons and power-ups, and one large question: could Sonic cope with having a different weapon and power-up in his face every ten seconds? And the answer is…yes. Sonic may not have ever seen that much variety in a one-on-one match, even against Ultimate Emerl, but he's certainly seen that level of variety and had it all go against him at the same time when dealing with entire armies of uniquely-designed robots at once. Disregarding that, Sonic's seen and handled similar items to almost all of Mario's normal weapons – even his Ultra Hammer just doesn't stack up to what Sonic has handled in the past. And there's just nothing in Mario's power-up arsenal that guarantees a win against Sonic. Those that do come somewhat close can only last so long due to existing only for a short time or being taken out by a single blow. And remember that Sonic's entire fighting style is based on dodging blows and getting in multiple super-fast strikes! While many of his power-ups grant flight, giving Mario an aerial advantage, like, half of the robots Sonic destroys can fly with just as much ease as Cape Mario. It's nothing he hasn't dealt with a hundred times before. Maybe Mario could kill Sonic with the Gold Flower, but it's doubtful. I mean, Sonic dodges hundreds of lasers all the time. He's not going to be hit by a couple of bouncing golden fireballs. Even if he is caught by surprise and gets hit, those things struggle to work against tougher foes like Koopalings, who, again, are certainly not as tough as Sonic. And that's if he's caught off-guard with his shield down and somehow doesn't dodge them. Lucky Cat Mario might be powerful as a combination of abilities, but all it can really do is buy Mario time. Sonic's not going to run into a statue out of pure chance, and even if he did, the Immunity Idol would likely protect him from instant death. Mario's best chance was either Excalibur or the Invincibility Leaf. And yet Sonic's dealt with weapons of similar, if not greater, power when it comes to Exaclibur with his own version of the weapon on several occasions. And White Tanooki Mario couldn't last forever, nor did it boost Mario's stats to be able to tag Sonic. Even if it could last forever, that still doesn't mean Sonic would lose. Remember, it vanishes after coming into contact with anything as hot as or hotter than lava, which has a temperature of 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, Sonic's pure speed can produce fire that can melt steel – reaching temperatures of over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit! Or he could always go Hyper and throw him into the sun. Or grab him and use a spin dash to get to the center of the planet. Or run him to a volcano. Really, the moment he figures out Mario has a weakness to heat (assuming he doesn't already know, remember that they're best friends), the fight's pretty much over.

But ultimately, Sonic's feats just go above Mario's. When you take a look at some of the things Sonic's done, it's just…unfortunate. Let's showcase a couple of the most special events, and see how Sonic just obliterates this match.

Once upon a time, there was a Metarex called the "Scarship." This monstrous battleship was so powerful, it conquered planets with ease and eradicated entire civilizations. Even Eggman stood no chance against it. So Sonic and crew went up against the beast, and ended up damaging it so badly, it was forced to self-destruct. So then this spaceship was going to blow up and take everyone there out with it, so Sonic was loaded up into a cannon for an extra boost in speed, and then _pushed the meteor-sized ship miles away in a couple seconds_ and, when it exploded, just _tanked the explosion point-blank_. Given its size and makeup and assuming gravity similar to Earth, seeing as Chris walked around it so easily, the amount of explosive energy necessary to blow the whole thing to bits would be over _42,000 Gigatons of TNT_. And he was fine! And then there was the time a massive asteroid was falling towards the planet and was going to cause the apocalypse. After Knuckles smashed the thing to bits in outer space, Sonic _raced around the entire world and found and blocked every single piece of the asteroid from hitting the ground in less than ten seconds_. And that's not all – Knuckles was strong enough to smash that asteroid to pieces, and Sonic's matched his punches with his kicks on multiple occasions! Another time, Eggman built a device capable of outputting so much energy that it would cause every volcano on the planet to erupt, destroying all life in the world. When the thing unleashed its fully-charged blast, Sonic grabbed Knuckles in a spin dash and the two grabbed the energy ball and _dispelled it._ Yes, the pure energy from that spin dash was powerful enough to dispel an apocalyptic weapon. Another time, the Time Eater was tearing through reality, and Sonic and his past self ended up in a dimension where _nothing existed_. Not only did they survive, but after entering the essence of the timestream, the Time Eater chased after them while gobbling up the essence of time as it fell behind their pace. That's right, Sonic is literally _faster than time_. You know, the one thing that determines _what speed is_? Oh, yeah, and another time, he outraced _the concept of death_. And let's not forget the time he outmatched the pure power of the essence of all evil, or the time survived bombardment by meteors, or when he ran around a lake fast enough to _separate the water at an atomic level_. And remember Metal Sonic? The powerful robot that was built to surpass Sonic in every way, but Sonic still wrecks every time? Well, Metal got really tired of being beaten, so he stole all of the Chaos Emeralds and achieved his own _Super State_ , just like Super Sonic. And then he went up against normal Sonic – and Sonic grabbed him and _exactly matched his strength without even trying_. And by the way, all of this was in base form without any extra equipment or weapons. Oh, the things you have to leave out of an analysis just to make the fight seem a little more fair than it is.

Ultimately, as unfortunate as it seems, Mario is just outclassed in this fight. I didn't think he would be, really, I didn't. But when listing advantages, Mario only takes Arsenal and Experience, while Sonic takes Strength, Speed, Durability, Strategy, Skill, Abilities, Training, and he even has less exploitable weaknesses. Sonic had many ways he could end the fight way faster than Mario – in fact, without a Luma, Mario can't even breathe in space, while Sonic can. So Sonic could always just grab him, leap into outer space, and just…wait for him to die. There isn't much Mario can do to stop that.

As it turns out, this fight came down to a matter of purpose and meaning. Mario is meant to be a true hero, to always be able to reach enough power to deal with evil, to constantly surpass ever-growing danger and evil in the name of good. Bowser's always getting some new incredible ability, and Mario's always still beating him – after failing the first time. Meanwhile, Sonic was meant to be a hero who didn't take anybody seriously because he was always just so much more powerful than all of them. It didn't matter whether they were a forever-balding nemesis, a mountainous pile of dark matter, an ancient deity, or a planet that can destroy the galaxy. He treats everything like it's a game, and every single time, it turns out that there's a level beyond what he's shown before. Anything he's done before, he's always better than that.

So, what happens when you put a man who will rise above any challenge against a creature who will lower himself to make anything a challenge? Well…one has already reached the heights the other is climbing to get to.

I guess Mario just couldn't keep up.

 **The winner is Sonic the Hedgehog.**

…

Whew, guys! It's done! It's finally done!

So, what next?

Well, I want to, first of all, confirm that there will be a Season 2, so to speak, though the upload schedule will be far more lenient. Don't be too surprised if only one or two episodes are uploaded a year. Hey, this is just for fun after, all. When will the first episode premier? You'll see.

But, in the meantime, I want to do a little bit of a retrospective of Season 1. Talk about what it was like to make this fanfic and list off some of the mistakes I made in previous episodes. Because I did, in fact, make quite a few. I still stand by the winners of each matchup, but there are quite a few points out there that no longer stand.

Most importantly, though, I want to do a Q&A. If you have any questions whatsoever, whether they be about a certain character, a calculation, a matchup I did, what it was like to write the story, what I'll be doing in the future, even a rant, all of it is completely and totally welcome. Unlimited questions for everyone! Get others to read this story, and let them ask questions! And if you're reading in the future after the Q&A, don't be afraid! Ask a question, and I'll answer it directly ASAP. I've poured hundreds of hours of my life into this project. I'll feel silly if I can't help you guys understand why Mario isn't faster than light or why Sonic isn't omnipotent.

And please, suggest more matchups! I have a good idea of what I want in Season 2, but more episodes can always be added and old ones can be replaced! If you think you have a good idea, throw it to me!

And once more, questions _galore_ , please! It'd be real disappointing if I couldn't even scrounge up two questions per episode. Definitely share this with anyone you think might like it so they can ask me/threaten me with questions, too!

See you guys soon!

-LittleZbot.


	12. Season 1 - Statistics & Q&A

_Episode_ _∅:_ _Statistics & Q&A – Season 1:_

Well, this season was a lot of fun, and today I show it all off. Everything you never wanted to know about this season. I've acknowledged mistakes, answered questions, found battles I will never write, found battles I will write, and hinted at said battles. There's plenty of stuff here – including spoilers. If you haven't read all of the previous battles, please do before reading this. I poured hundreds of hours into these fights, so I'd be very disappointed if you just skipped them all and read this to find out who wins. Plus, then you have the right to complain about the winner? You really want to do that, right? Everyone does! Right?!

Let's see how I did on this long road.

 **MISTAKES:**

Ah, but it can't be a road without a few stumbles. Might as well get these out of the way. During my first couple of months working on this project, I made my fair share of mistakes, and though I stand by the winners, I have to acknowledge where I went wrong. Let's start from the beginning and work our way down.

 **The Meta vs. Black Beetle:**

 _ **Black Beetle's Origin:**_ Most of Black Beetle's origin story was taken only from inference using the Young Justice TV Show Comics in relation to the actual comics. I used Dawur from the comics because he took a very similar role to Black Beetle in the show and had some similar abilities. So I just…made a hundred assumptions and leaps about Black Beetle's backstory and spat them out as if they were fact. They aren't. We don't know a thing about Black Beetle's backstory except that he's one of the most powerful Beetles and…I think it was said that he was the first one in the Young Justice comics. Don't really remember. It wouldn't change a thing about the winner or the fight, but I'm ashamed to have printed false information just to make something sound cooler.

 _ **The Metal Crate:**_ How the heck was I able to put this thing at 8,600 Tons and have _nobody question it_? I myself didn't question it! I'm a little more experienced now. I used an online calculator to find the thing's weight, and I must have messed up the input numbers somehow AND had it calculate the weight as if the ENTIRE THING was one giant steel brick. Scaled appropriately, similar crates, when full, weigh in at around 27 Tons, and to throw it that far that fast would take around 265 Tons of Force. This battle has been updated with the right numbers. Again, it makes no real difference to the fight (except to make it even more of a stomp), but it was a major mistake that needed to be fixed.

 **Kamek vs. Twilight Sparkle:**

 _ **Durability:**_ Ah, the classic "how much this thing weighs is the same amount as the force it exerts when crashing." This is a surprisingly common argument online, which is why I thought it was true. It's not. In certain situations, it can serve as a minimum force, but that's kind of rare. So a 1200 lb piano falling would not hit Twilight with 1200 lb of force. I put in the right numbers the second time, though these days, that durability looks kind of lowballed. Though Kamek's was way more lowballed. Also, for some reason, the recap number for durability keeps remaining as the original stupidly low numbers no matter how many times I reupload the chapter. Argh.

 **Henry Stickmin vs. The Second Coming:**

 _ **The Chosen One:**_ The inclusion of The Chosen One in this fight was absurd and was in no way justified. Sure, it made for a mildly entertaining scene in the battle and allowed me to talk about his craziness, but The Second Coming has never transformed back into The Chosen One of his own will. Or at all, for that matter. The only justification is that his form flashes a few times in Animator vs. Animation IV and looks like The Chosen One – though it's only really used to solidify his origin as a reincarnation of The Chosen One. Would the result change without The Chosen One's inclusion? No. The Second Coming has handled far greater threats than Henry and has more impressive feats under his belt along with the Minecraft Block. But my consistent reference to The Chosen One form may certainly have nullified my arguments and results for some of you. For that, I'm sorry. As an interesting side note, The Chosen One himself has recently appeared in an episode of Animator vs. Animation alongside The Second Coming. No idea what that's about.

 _ **Tons vs. Tons-Force:**_ Again, I was just starting out and didn't really know what I was getting into. I think Bowser vs. King Dedede was when I really started fully understanding how to measure characters and how to put their abilities against each other. But at this point, I didn't even understand the difference between Tons of Weight and Tons of Force, as clearly shown in my assessment of their strength capacity. Henry could throw a bullet with 6 Tons of Force, but TSC beats that by…lifting a 17 Ton Gold Block. That doesn't make sense. Now, TSC is definitely stronger than Henry (who struggled to lift a 2 Ton diamond), but I really could have shown that better. How about how he threw said blocks? That puts his strength way over 6 Tons of Force.

 _ **Force of a Crashing Car:**_ Wha- how…how on earth did I manage to calculate the force of a crashing car at 482,000 lb of Force?! I seriously don't understand. I remember running the stats through an online calculator, but…geez. This is why you don't rely on online calculators, kids. Do the equations yourself, then triple-check all of them to make sure your result is correct. It's what I do now, and it's the only fair way I've found. Anyway, properly measured, the force of a two-ton car ramming into you at 60 MPH is more around 11,000 lb of Force, though TSC taking several in a row without a scratch still showcases superior durability to Henry. Heck, Henry's died just from being hit by one truck! Still, these math problems make this episode probably my least-favorite of the bunch that I've done. They make the results feel untrustworthy, which saddens me greatly.

 **Light Yagami vs. Lelouch Vi Brittania:**

 _ **Non-Canon Exclusion:**_ This was made at a time where the Rules of Death Battle were a little less…defined. It was hard to say if non-canon material was allowed or not, or if only general equipment was included for a combatant or if all equipment was included. Since then, thanks to a certain episode of the Death Battle Cast, those rules have been firmly laid down, and I am able to refer back to them. And one such rule was that non-canon material is most certainly allowed _as supporting evidence_. So my not allowing any non-canon material in this fight was off the mark. I should have included such things as the Japanese Death Note Drama Series or the PS2 and DS Code Geass games. To some extent, anyway – Lelouch's Geass is completely different in one game, for instance. Still wouldn't have made a difference, but such things should have been accounted for, as they have been ever since.

 **Bowser vs. King Dedede:**

 _ **Scaling to Kirby:**_ Expressly stated to be a mistake in Kirby vs. Superman. I hadn't delved into the research for Kirby fully yet when I wrote this, so I didn't realize yet that he had the literal power of being stronger than anyone who faced him. Because of this, I counted Dedede's single combat-based win against him (when I later found out that, according to the Meta Knight, Kirby threw the match on purpose) along with a few game victories (you know, chess and dancing). It was a mistake. Would it have made a difference? No way. The Kirby Universe is still stupidly powerful and, for the most part, more powerful than the Mario Universe, and King Dedede still has the advantage in nearly every way over Bowser. Still needed to be covered, though.

 _ **Lightning-Speed:**_ When a character is directly stated multiple times to be as fast or faster than lightning, you need to take that in context. If, say, Killer Croc were to dodge a blast that moved as fast as lightning and that was considered impressive, that probably means the beam was moving at 224,000 MPH, the initial stroke of a lightning bolt. But if someone like Green Lantern dodges a laser said to move at the speed of lighting and it's considered impressive, we should probably scale it up to 220,000,000 MPH, the speed of the reverse stroke of said bolt, since he's dodged plenty of similarly-fast beams and even faster ones many times. It's all about context, as it is with most projectiles. Considering the absurd level of speed that most Kirby characters have, I probably should have measured Kracko at 220,000,000 MPH instead of 224,000 MPH. I did it in Kirby vs. Superman, anyway.

 **Dust vs. Kirito:**

 _ **Non-Canon Exclusion?:**_ The beginning of the episode states that I'm not including non-canon feats or appearances…but I clearly do throughout the episode. Several of Kirito's Sword Skills, in fact, are only available in SAO-Based Video Games. So this is clearly just a thing I wrote automatically and forgot to take out. Eh.

As for the others…I really can't find anything majorly wrong. If you guys do find something questionable, definitely tell me about it, but I think I've covered all the big problems. So, let's move on to…

 **LITTLEZBOT'S DEATH BATTLE Q &A:**

Let's get to our first question!

*crickets chirp*

Seriously, guys? Nobody had any questions? NOT ONE? Well, I'm kind of sad. Does this mean I'm really good at writing these things or really bad? Hmm. Well, here are some questions I wish you'd asked.

 **The Meta vs. Black Beetle:**

 **Q:** How come you used the version from Young Justice primarily instead of the one from the Blue Beetle comics? Isn't it a rule for Death battles to use the original canon as the primary source of information?

 **A:** But…the Young Justice TV Show IS the primary source of this Black Beetle. There is a Black Beetle in the comics, but he's entirely different, with a different name, origin, alliance, place in the story, and powers and abilities. Also, he's a ridiculously minor characters that appears, like, twice. Black beetle as he's known is almost exclusively created by the show with nothing borrowed but the name. It's similar to Green Arrow from DC Comics and Green Arrow from the Arrow CW Show. Entirely different characters (even though one's based off the other) who share a name. Though at least Green Arrow CW has somewhat similar abilities and a mildly similar backstory. These Black Beetles don't even have that in common.

 **Dust vs. Kirito:**

 **Q:** How come both combatants can unleash far stronger strikes than they, themselves, can take? The laws of physics say this is impossible!

 **A:** Simple answer? Magic and Technology. More specifically, Dust is created by and his powers are granted by magic (that is also not magic, because that would make too much sense), so while he could punch with enough force to shatter his hand, it wouldn't do a thing to him. But if someone punched him with that much force, it would shatter his hand. Make sense? Good. Similarly, Kirito, in his story, is a literal video game character with a healthbar. It'd be pretty annoying to play a game where your HP went down with every hit you landed. 

**Rainbow Dash vs. Red Tornado:**

 **Q:** You said "- it's not like there are any robot bodies waiting to be possessed in Equestria." I thought the battle stage didn't matter!

 **A:** Poor wording? The truth is, it doesn't matter where the battle is held – so long as it's not in the Justice League Watchtower, where a few spare bodies are kept. Since that's pretty much the only place where he can get replacement bodies, to have that be the battle setting would be bias more than anything else.

 **Q:** Wouldn't Ulthoon's true form kill Rainbow Dash, since it can defeat the whole Justice League at once?

 **A:** As stated in the episode, it's unlikely. At least, assuming she doesn't stick around too long. Ulthoon as an elemental has only effectively fought twice after being transferred into his first robot body – once to kill a goon who pissed him off, and once when being wielded as a weapon during the Crisis on Infinite Earths event. On all other occasions, he's merely used the form to travel and enter a new body as fast as possible. And Rainbow Dash has survived weather-related phenomena that are quite similar in the past – like when she went up into the sky and fought off air demons, or when she temporarily held off the frozen north's winds, which were being led by a malicious spirit who had literally turned into the essence of wind. The point is, she has enough experience and ability to survive a short while against Ulthoon, and she only needs to survive long enough to make an escape – to hole up for 24 hours until he dissipates. And while Rainbow's cockiness has gotten her into trouble with more powerful opponents before, when she knows she's outmatched, she'll definitely run and hide until she can sort things out. She's done that plenty of times, so it's doubtful this would go differently.

 **Q:** Why didn't you use Red Tornado's Superman-fighting body? Isn't using a character's maximum potential a rule of Death Battle?

 **A:** This was one of the most difficult decisions I had to make in regards to this series. Yes, that is one of Death Battle's rules, but Red Tornado is an extremely unique specimen in regards to that rule. The rule was really made so that there's no bias by omission or restriction. If we have Batman in a Death Battle, it's not fair to give him the body of old man Bruce from Batman Beyond. One would then think it's unfair to give Red Tornado a body that's decidedly weaker than his best stuff, right? Especially since Ulthoon's maximum potential is enough to overpower Superman. But that's the reason this rule is so flexible. Think of it like this: if I were to do a Death Battle between Deadpool and, say, Saitama from One Punch Man, you wouldn't want me to say Deadpool would win because of the short amount of time where he was Captain Universe, would you? He lost that quickly, and it was due to outside sources anyway. It's the same deal here – Red Tornado only had a couple of bodies that could fight against members of the Justice League like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Shazam, and all were either destroyed or vanished without an explanation. For the same reason, I didn't put him in his nanobot body that instantly heals from any wound or his body that manipulates electricity and mind-controls people. Both barely lasted long enough to be acknowledged, and none of these represents the version of Red Tornado everyone knows and loves. He's almost always in a basic Red Tornado wind-controlling red-tornado-making body, and he can't generally access his other bodies at any point, just like Batman can't just call the Hellbat suit if he needs it. From a canonical standpoint, he should only have access to his most recent body, which was a general, average body. So we use all the feats it performed and all the others his general tornado-making bodies have performed because that's what we can give the character while still being fair. Plus, if you want to talk about bias, it's hard to be more biased than I'd have to be to give him a long-broken and almost-never-used Superman-fighting body. Of course he'd win, but nobody cares about that. Everyone wants to see him fighting as he's always represented and known.

To make a long answer short, all those bodies were either broken or forgotten, and since they were so rarely seen and almost always outliers, including them would be way more biased than not including them.

 **DEATH BATTLES I WILL NEVER DO:**

Every once in a while, I'll see a suggestion that either looks good on paper but ends up being terrible, or is super-highly requested despite being a pretty darn bad idea for a Death Battle. These are some of the battles I will never write.

 **Goku vs. Sonic:**

Or, for that matter, Vegeta vs. Shadow, Trunks vs. Silver, Metal Sonic vs. Cell, Chaos vs. Buu, Infinite vs. Jiren, or any of those highly-requested Dragon Ball vs. Sonic fights. Even though every fight matches up awesomely in terms of abilities and backstory, Dragon Ball characters can perform destruction on a scale nothing like Sonic characters can. At most, Super Sonic or Shadow might be able to destroy a planet – but Vegeta could do that in the Saiyan Saga, and all these characters are now leagues stronger. It's never a fair fight.

 **Hiccup & Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon) vs. Eragon & Saphira (Inheritance Cycle):**

These two are almost exactly matched in every possible way except for one thing: Magic. Eragon's magic gives him a thousand ways to instantly kill Hiccup and Toothless in an instant. BUT IF HE DIDN'T HAVE IT, THIS WOULD BE AWESOME! But he does have it. If Hiccup and Toothless gain magical immunity in HTTYD3, then we'll talk. But that's absurdly unlikely.

 **Emerl (Sonic) vs. Amazo (DC Comics):**

Seemingly a perfect matchup in terms of powers and uniqueness and backstory, but while Emerl has all the powers of the Sonic world, Amazo has all the powers of the DC world, which is far and away superior. Superman's powers alone obliterate even Ultimate Emerl.

 **Shadow (Sonic) vs. Meta Knight (Kirby):**

Excellent matchup, with surprisingly close stats and unique abilities. But DeadAliveManiac already did this battle – and I agree with virtually everything he said. There's no need for me to repeat what's already been determined.

 **Winston (Overwatch) vs. Gorilla Grodd (DC Comics):**

NO. Has anyone who requests this matchup ever read about Grodd? This fight would be over a hundred times before it began. It's Thor vs. Raiden and Scrooge McDuck vs. Shovel Knight all over again.

 **Nui (Kill la Kill) vs. Neo (RWBY):**

Both are perfectly matched in the type of characters they play; it'd be hard to find a more fitting match for either as colorful parasol-wielding classy ladies whose skill and power is far beyond any of the heroes'. But Nui is on a completely different level than Neo. Kill la Kill by itself is on a different level from RWBY, and Nui is on a different level from Kill la Kill! Sorry, no. Way too one-sided. Just like Winston vs. Gorilla Grodd.

 **SEASON 2 – UPCOMING BATTLES:**

Yes, folks, Season 2 is on its way! Featuring fifteen episodes, it will all climax on Number 25 with a battle between the two most powerful characters in all of fiction! Well, maybe. It depends on if I decide I don't like one of these fights, or if I get a suggestion I really like. Nothing's set in stone. But what battles are going to appear? Well, enjoy this section where we hint at every planned battle in Season 2 thus far!

SEASON PREMIER: 11. Beacon's Youngest Monster Hunter vs. Spiderman's Deadliest Monster

12\. Psychotic Hammer-Wielding Jester vs. Psychotic Chainsaw-Wielding Cheerleader

13\. Ultimate Life Form vs. DON'T LOSE YOUR WAAAAY

14\. Marvel's Deadliest Android vs. Dragon Ball's Evolving Machine

15\. Indie Spaceship that Kills Rebellions vs. Indie Spaceship that Kills Chickens

16\. Powerful Alchemist Whose Soul is in his Armor vs. Powerful Magician Whose Soul is in his Sword

17\. World's Worst (but also best) Inventor Villain vs. World's Worst (but also best) Magician Villain

18\. Blood Gulch Battles vs. Empty Lot Battles

19\. Eggman's Second-Strongest Robot vs. Alrest's Strongest Artificial Blade

20\. The Dragon Warrior vs. Perry's Biggest Rival

21\. Pokémon's Mountain Mover vs. Fossil Fighter's Mountain Breaker

22\. The Mushroom Kingdom Monarch vs. The Canopy Kingdom Crown Princess

23\. Bad Luck Charm vs. Bad Luck Magnet

24\. Disney's Snow Queen vs. Dreamworks' Frosty Hero

SEASON FINALE: 25. The Two Most Powerful Characters in all of Fiction Face Off

This isn't the set order of the battles, nor is it a set list. Again, if I decide I don't like a match, out it goes, or if I get a suggestion I do like, in it goes. I will say that the first four battles are almost certainly going to be released in that order. So guess away at the combatants, and let your mouths froth with excitement! Or salt. Whichever, really.

 **SEASON 1 STATS:**

And now, for the end of it all. Season 1 has come to a close, so let's take a look back at the fights, who won, and why. And see how many words long each chapter was, because why not?

 **1\. The Meta vs. Black Beetle:**  
 _Winner:_ Black Beetle  
 _Reasoning:_ Superior weaponry, experience, physical abilities; his healing nullified any real damage the Meta could do; has the ability to wipe out the Meta's A.I., granting himself a further advantage  
 _Word Count_ : 9,980

 **2\. Kamek vs. Twilight Sparkle:**  
 _Winner:_ Kamek  
 _Reasoning:_ Better magical arsenal; superior training and experience with magic; higher physical abilities; has fought and bested foes more powerful than Twilight  
 _Word Count:_ 8,110

 **3\. Henry Stickmin vs. The Second Coming:  
** _Winner:_ The Second Coming  
 _Reasoning:_ Superior skill and knowledge of martial arts; equal, if not better, arsenal; better physical feats; has dealt with foes with greater powers than Henry  
 _Word Count:_ 10,580

 **4\. Light Yagami vs. Lelouch Vi Brittania:**  
 _Winner:_ Lelouch Vi Brittania  
 _Reasoning:_ Better intellect; far more impressive feats; more experience; Geass is a better tool than the Death Note  
 _Word Count:_ 17,136

 **5\. Bowser vs. King Dedede:**  
 _Winner:_ King Dedede  
 _Reasoning:_ Dedede Hammer alone counters almost everything in Bowser's arsenal; Dedede has far more experience dealing with far deadlier foes than Bowser; he's stronger and faster and just as hard to kill  
 _Word Count:_ 12,069

 **6\. Dust vs. Kirito:**  
 _Winner:_ Dust  
 _Reasoning:_ Extremely close fight. Equal physical abilities and almost all other advantages cancel each other out. This leaves the winner decided entirely by skill, technique, and fighting style – and Dust takes all of the above  
 _Word Count:_ 13,201

 **7\. Rainbow Dash vs. Red Tornado:**  
 _Winner:_ Rainbow Dash  
 _Reasoning:_ Physical superiority; attacks hold more variety; fighting style counters Red Tornado's extremely well  
 _Word Count:_ 10,621

 **8\. Kirby vs. Superman:**  
 _Winner:_ Kirby  
 _Reasoning:_ Similar physical capabilities (and both are potentially infinite); abilities held more variety and countered anything Superman could throw at him; better martial arts; one inhale ends the match; Kirby has dealt with foes that Superman can't deal with  
 _Word Count:_ 20,451

 **9\. Link vs. Terrarian:**  
 _Winner:_ Link  
 _Reasoning:_ Superior training, experience, abilities, arsenal, weaponry, strength, speed, durability; fighting style completely annihilates Terrarian's  
 _Word Count:_ 26,861

 **10\. Mario vs. Sonic:**  
 _Winner:_ Sonic  
 _Reasoning:_ Superior strength, speed, durability, training, strategy, skill, abilities; can counter anything Mario can throw at him; Super Forms are far above anything Mario has; feats go several steps beyond Mario's  
 _Word Count:_ 25,102 

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

Well, with Season 1 out of the way, it's time to get to work on Season #2. When will the first episode be premiering? Well…

I'm happy to announce that Episode 11 of LittleZbot's Death Battles, and the Season 2 premier, will be out for everyone to read on October 1st, 2018! Yes, that is soon. And if that's not exciting enough, prepare for Episode 12 on October 31st, 2018, as a wonderful little Halloween special. Conisder it my gift to you.

As always, leave any and all questions down below, and review the crap out of this story, please! I require substance if I'm ever to take over the world! What? No! I'm not evil! Totally!

See you guys in a little over a week.

\- LittleZbot


	13. Ruby Rose vs Carnage

**A/N: DA FRICK? I JUST SPENT HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF MY LIFE WRITING MARIO VS. SONIC, AND NOW DEATH BATTLE IS GOING TO REDO IT THEMSELVES?! I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Here's hoping they don't place Sonic at around 6700 MPH again or ignore Mario's castle-throwing. I just hope I was right. It'd be really sad if I wasn't - I'd have wasted so much time and effort. And what do you know, you guys never needed that Season Finale anyway! Heh. I'm going to go cry in a corner now.**

 **But not before welcoming everyone to Season 2! We start off with a battle I've been looking forward to for a long time and, with the new Venom movie and RWBY Volume 6 coming out this month, there's never been a better time to do it! Enjoy!**

 **Both series are currently on-going, so this battle's release date is October 1st, 2018, as a reference point. Don't get mad at things that happen later – I can't see the future. Also, due to the nature of one of the combatants, this episode is a little…intense. You've been warned.**

 _Episode 11: Ruby Rose (RWBY) vs. Carnage (Marvel)_

The death of a parent can have tremendous effects on the mind of a child. For some, it can inspire them to become the greatest of heroes, and for others, it can darken them to become the worst of nightmares. Ruby Rose, the red and black monster hunter of Beacon Academy, and Carnage, the red and black monster of New York.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.

 **Ruby Rose:**

The world is full of heroes. Whether they are heroes to legends, to themselves, or to others, one thing is certain: as long as there are heroes, there are those who inspire them, for inspiration creates heroes, and heroes create inspiration. And sometimes both are the case, especially when it comes to little girls made out of rose petals training to be monster hunters.

Ruby Rose was never your average child, probably because she didn't come from your average family. It's hard to be average, after all, when the world you live in is plagued by nightmarish monsters called Grimm. Each Grimm is basically a way more powerful and evil version of an animal, mixed with a little sprinkle of the essence of death. They'd tear apart cities, kill everybody they found, and, you know, generally be a nuisance. As such, the four nations of Remnant decided to band together and create, for lack of a better term, super soldier monster hunters. Each country had schools that taught children how to protect people and kill the creatures of Grimm, and those who dedicated their lives to the deed were called Huntsmen and Huntresses. Ruby's father, Taiyang, belonged to one of the greatest teams of these Huntsmen the world had ever known: Team STRQ. The four members of this team (Summer, Taiyang, Raven, Qrow) would continually shape Ruby's life for years to come. Well, starting on that trend, Taiyang got together with Raven, who eventually had a girl named Yang – and then just kind of took off to lead a band of outlaws. Kind of a jerk move. But Taiyang got over it really fast (like, way too fast, it's kind of scary) and had another child with Summer. Summer actually turned out to be a great mother and was idolized by her daughter, Ruby. But then one day she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, making life way harder on both Taiyang and his two children. The two half-sisters bonded together for support, becoming almost inseparable. Yang found solace in her training and ability to have fun killing monsters, while Ruby found it in stories of great heroes, justice, righteousness, and people who were able to face the dark and defeat it. Needless to say, both were well on the path to becoming huntresses.

 _A man wielding a red sword in a Dust Shop points his blade at the back of a headphone-wearing Ruby's head. "All right, kid. Put your hands where I can see them."_

 _There's no response._

" _Hey, I said hands in the air!" He moves forward. "You got a death wish or something?" He grabs her cloak, demanding her attention._

 _Ruby turns and pulls down her headphones. "Yes?"_

" _I said," growls the man, "put your hands in the air! Now!"_

 _A confused look crosses Ruby's face. "Are you…robbing me?"_

" _YES!"_

 _Understanding dawns on her face. "Ohhhhh."_

 _Then she kicks him twenty feet away through several bookshelves and a stone wall._

Now knowing what to do with her life, Ruby sought training from her step-uncle, Qrow. As another father figure who also happened to be an insanely powerful warrior, he decided to take Ruby under his wing and teach her how to be one of the most dangerous monster hunters to ever wield a blade. Because in a family full of legendary warriors and heroes, what else did you expect her to be? Qrow was primarily a scythe fighter, and so when Ruby designed and forged her own weapon, that's what she went for. Through his training, Ruby rose to the top of her class at Signal (basically a high school for future hunstmen and huntresses) and was let into Beacon, the best college-level training course for huntsmen and huntresses in the world, two years ahead of her peers, where she proved quickly that not only could she hold her own against students with far more training, but she could surpass almost all of them. She even ended up leading her own team, Team RWBY (Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang), which grew to be considered one of the most powerful teams at Beacon. Oh, yeah, her sister, Yang, was on her team. So that's convenient.

Ruby typically wears black and red to symbolize the impact that her mother's life and death left on her, and completes the look with a hooded cape that can extend and…just looks awesome in combat. Ruby is a pure-hearted little girl with a strong sense of right and wrong, an indomitable will, an endless capacity to make friends – and the ability to kill a monster a hundred different ways. Over the single year she trained, she killed dozens, no, hundreds of Grimm in a variety of situations and saved thousands of lives by extension. This is almost entirely thanks to two things: her Aura and her weapon. Let's focus on Aura first.

Aura is a spiritual force that comes from the user's soul. Everyone has some amount of Aura, though it usually remains locked until either it comes out during training or another Aura user activates it. Think of it as a form of spiritual pressure that can manifest itself by altering some slight aspects of reality. Aura is used by almost every huntsman and huntress, and, in a typical case, grants superhuman strength, speed, senses, a minor healing factor, and an invisible, skintight forcefield that takes a lot to break through. Think of the forcefield like the overshield, or maybe a video game Health Bar. When a blow hits the field, the Aura level is lessened by the appropriate amount, but the fighter isn't hurt the slightest bit – and when it comes to Ruby, she feels little to no pain when her Aura takes a blow. Her Aura has made her strong enough to chop right through a tree without even trying, fast enough to dodge point-blank gunfire, and tough enough for her forcefield to take an explosion that could destroy a one-story building without a noticeable difference. Even if her Aura is drained completely, it'll regenerate within an hour, so it's really hard to put her down. Ruby herself has also learned to use her Aura to jump at least twenty feet into the air, form temporary invisible shields, sense others' presences and, in some cases, predict her opponent's next moves. Also, her Aura naturally extends to any weapon or object in her possession without losing any power, making them essentially indestructible. However, her most prominent use of her Aura (and everyone's favorite) is when she activates her Semblance.

 _After seeing the last of her teammates knocked out by Team JNPR, Ruby becomes determined. She kneels on the ground for a moment, then tears ahead with a sonic boom, creating air waves around her that catch every loose object in the lunchroom and rams it forward into a tornado following Ruby's pure speed. As she gets faster, Ruby wraps herself up in her cloak and turns into a mass of rose petals, racing ahead through the air. The currents of her movement force all four members of Team JNPR to go flying through the air and end up pinned against a wall which then shatters like glass, all before the typhoon of miscellaneous lunchroom objects hits them. Ruby stands in front of the now knocked-out team, having defeated them all with only a single move._

Every Aura user has a Semblance, a way they can utilize their Aura in a manner that no one else can. A Semblance is often considered related to the user's personality, and, aside from skill, is what ends up winning most human vs. human battles in the world of Remnant. Think of it like a superpower. Yang, for example, can add the strength of every blow she's received thus far in the fight and add it to her own. Others can nullify emotions, block off their pain receptors, create shadow clones, manipulate electricity, and so on. Ruby's Semblance is the ability to burst into rose petals. Sounds boring, and pretty ineffective, right? But seriously, this Semblance is way more powerful than many have given it credit for. Ruby's already faster than just about anyone else at Beacon, being able to move up to Mach 3, but with her Semblance, that speed increases tremendously and is able to create massive whirlwinds in her wake (as you saw up there), lift her off the ground (enabling limited flight), and move so fast not even the other students, or sometimes the teachers, can see her, making it seem like she teleported. Given U.S. Air Force eye tests, this would put her top speed at over 9,000 MPH. However, she can only move short distances in this form without overexerting herself – the farthest she's yet moved is around 300 feet, though she can do so rapid-fire. Of course, she can also burst into petals in order to avoid an incoming blow and can separate into multiple parts and reform while doing so. And while using her Semblance can drain her Aura forcefield somewhat, it usually doesn't affect it at all unless she's overexerting it.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of her Semblance, though, is that this usage of it isn't all there is. Unlocking the Semblance seems to have had some sort of passive effect on Ruby, as she often leaves rose petals wherever she goes, and they continually drop from her cape in a seemingly endless amount, though she can halt this if she needs to, say, sneak up on a Grimm. Most fascinating of all, though, is the effect the Semblance has on blood. Whenever she inflicts an injury onto another person or a Grimm without the use of Dust (don't worry, we'll get to what that is), they seem to bleed out rose petals instead of blood. It's been made clear over the years that her Semblance somehow continually transforms her enemies' blood into rose petals. Note that is isn't a spreading effect – if it was, just nicking a fighter would be an instant death. Instead, it seems to turn the leaking blood to rose petals – by estimating the amount of petals on-screen at once during this slash to a Beowulf (a stronger, deadlier, eviler wolf), it looks like blood is transformed throughout the length of the blast or cut and the transformation is just over a centimeter deep. Not that it matters against her typical opponent. It doesn't matter if a Grimm bleeds blood or roses – after a good hit with Ruby's weapon, it's dead regardless.

Right, we should talk about Ruby's weapon. Crescent Rose was hand-made by Ruby to both emulate her uncle's incredibly powerful weapon and still fit with her fighting style and personality. She loves the thing just as if it were a real person, or even as if it were her best friend, but, to be fair, when the day comes that a weapon this powerful ends up saving your life this many times, you might tend to agree with her. It has three main modes. First up is the Carry Mode, where it's…um, smaller and easier to carry. I mean, I guess it could be used as makeshift shield, since it's essentially indestructible even without Aura…but that's it. Yeah, this mode sucks. Hence why she only ever uses the other two in battle. In the aptly named Sniper Mode, Crescent Rose transforms into a sniper rifle! Ruby has used this mode many times to tag opponents nearly as fast as her with high-caliber bullets capable of blowing off a Beowolf's head. She has pinpoint accuracy with this thing - once, after going flying into the air via Rose Petal Burst, she aimed downward, and without setting up any kind of a line of sight, shot a Grimm dead through its eyesocket over 200 feet away. Yes, she's capable of using this thing to its fullest even while falling through the air. This rifle fires bullets kept in a 30-pack clip, of which Ruby has several. She also has an additional type of clip, called Cross Rounds, which explode and are even deadlier and faster, but more capable of mid-air variance, which is why she doesn't always use them. Still, they're extremely powerful – one of them obliterated a large section of a giant stone pillar, which, given the size of the pillar and how much was left after the blast, could have taken up to 250 pounds of TNT! And, after becoming the leader of Team RWBY and going on just a ton of adventures, she's added four other types of rounds to the mix. Each one of these uses Dust, a mined mineral that's a source of power and holds elemental value (see, I told you I'd get to it!). With Gravity Dust Rounds, the force of the impact of the bullet is multiplied exponentially, with Fire Dust Rounds, she shoots out balls of flame, with Electric Dust Rounds, she can shock her enemies, halting their movements and forcing them onto the floor, and with Ice Dust Rounds, her bullets cover the target in a surprisingly durable ice cube. When she previously used Ice Dust to enhance her bullets, the ball of ice it formed was tough enough to restrain a Paladin mech, which can punch with up to 1,400 tons of force!

But she almost always has Crescent Rose out as it was meant to be – in Scythe Mode! In this form, Crescent Rose becomes a massively large and deadly scythe that she wields with insane amounts of skill. That blade is about six feet long, and it's sharp enough to easily slice right through…just about anything. Grimm, concrete, robots, solid steel – very little has stood up to its power. And when she swings the thing with all her little might, you better get out of the way real fast. It doesn't matter how tough you are – unless you've got Aura, you're dead. But even if that somehow isn't enough power, it's still hiding one more secret. The pointed end of the scythe, you know, right where the blade starts, is also a shotgun. Ruby can use the same rounds as she can in the sniper form, and with nearly the same effectiveness. True, it lacks the power and range of the sniper form (being designed as a custom-made shotgun, rather than a sniper rifle [though it has been customized as another sniper rifle in the past]), but the power it grants is more than enough to one-shot several different kinds of Grimm, including Beowolves, Ursa (stronger, deadlier, eviler black bears), and Griffons (stronger, deadlier, eviler lion+eagle combos). And the scythe's head can bend and lock into different positions with a single wrist movement, even to the point of transforming it into a spear or glaive. But most impressively, shooting the shotgun-like shots from Crescent Rose induces a huge amount of recoil. This doesn't seem important – until you realize that most of Ruby's fighting style is entirely based on this fact. She uses the recoil for extra-powerful slices, forcing the blade backwards at the right speeds and angles to kill multiple Grimm at once, and she even uses it to freaking fly. Well, not exactly – she stands on the back of the blade and fires the shots, sending the scythe and her soaring upwards. With multiple shots in a row, she can cover great distances, and send herself up to three thousand feet into the air. And, just like nearly every other Huntsman/Huntress-in-training, her fighting style is intricate and, honestly, beautiful in its execution, mixing together several martial arts in order to make one that's entirely her own, dodging and blocking any and all attacks her opponent unleashes and getting in several slices or gunshots in the same breath without a step missed.

All of this together proved really, really helpful during the Fall of Beacon. Yes, that's a thing that happened. So, long story short, when the gods created people, they gave them four powers: Creation, Destruction, Knowledge, and most importantly, Choice. But they also gave those four things physical forms called Relics. Think Infinity Stones. And, obviously, some big bads wanted to collect them, so the four greatest combat schools (including Beacon) were built on top of vaults that held the Relics, making them nigh-impossible to get to, especially since you had to be a Maiden to open a vault. Oh, yeah, a long time ago, a wizard made the seasons and made infinity stones for them, too, except the infinity stones were young girls called Maidens. When one died, the power is transferred to the next young girl in her thoughts, and so on and so forth. Maidens not only could open those vaults, but also had crazy elemental and weather powers, and could kill people with just one touch (assuming the victim's Aura was down). So Cinder Fall, Ruby's villainous rival, staged an enormous Grimm attack on Beacon in order to get the Fall Maiden powers and the Relic. It pretty much succeeded, though Ruby by herself killed dozens of Grimm and destroyed entire airships during the battle. And, when she learned one of her best friends, Pyrrha, was in a duel to the death against Cinder, who now had the Maiden powers, she raced to get there as fast as she could. And she got there just in time…to see Cinder kill Pyrrha with one hand. And that's when it happened. Blinded by anger and sorrow, Ruby's greatest power awoke. With a shout of her friend's name and a gasp, a blinding white light spilled out from Ruby's eyes, destroying every Grimm that came into contact with it.

This was the hidden ability of the Silver-Eyed Warriors.

According to legend, those born with Silver Eyes were meant to destroy evil. At full power, a silver-eyed warrior could kill a Grimm with a single look. Clearly, Ruby doesn't yet have that kind of control, but the few blasts she has made have been incredibly powerful – burning off one of Cinder's arms, horribly ruining her face, and forcing her to lose her voice for over a year. That same blast transformed a skyscraper-sized Dragon Grimm into stone – a feat that has never been replicated. However, she doesn't have much control over the Silver Eyes, as they only come out during extremely stressful situations. And they can't hurt people, just evil Grimm, and, apparently, Maidens. I don't know; it's weird. But even without those eyes, Ruby's accomplished an awful lot. Her sense of justice has carried her through more fights than you can imagine, and her willpower is really surprising, even for an anime protagonist.

She's strong enough to kill a Griffon with a single kick, fast enough to outrace a sniper bullet _after firing it_ , and her Aura is so tough, she took a bullet that shattered concrete and the forcefield didn't even blink. She's killed four Ursa with one move, murdered the crap out of a pack of over a hundred Beowolves, and is one of the only RWBY characters to kill a Beringel, one of the toughest Grimm out there. She's sent people flying dozens of feet into the air with just a kick, defeated five armed guards in combat at the same time in under fifteen seconds, took blows from lasers and building-sized explosions, survived a five-thousand foot fall thanks to Crescent Rose, and even survived a full-on beating by Tyrian, an incredibly powerful fighter who can drain away Aura and is capable of matching Qrow in power. She's led both Team RWBY and Team RNJR to victory over legions of Grimm and other threats, broke straight through a metal door with just a kick, and once caught a 1200 lb Nevermore (giant bird of death) in Crescent Rose, dragged it up the sheer side of a cliff that she was running up via glyphs and shotgun recoil, and decapitated it at the top with a forceful shove. Heck, after her training from Beacon, she was powerful enough to hitch a ride on one of those things and then murder it with one slice. She's been hit by blows that can break through steel, pulverized giant rocks by falling on them, and was once thrown back so hard she was sent flying high into the sky, landing against a Nevermore with enough force to instantly kill it, and then jumped back down to the ground like nothing had happened at all! With her teams by her side, she's defeated giant mechs, a small army of trained rebels/mafia grunts, blown up several airships, fought off a giant Grimm invasion, killed a giant rock monster, held off a full-fledged attack on Haven Academy (during which she equaled and helped defeat many powerful foes, including Mercury, Emerald, Hazel, and Leo), murdered up a eight-headed snake the size of a city block, and killed the Nuckelavee, the deadliest Grimm in the entire franchise. Even by herself, she's survived a 400 foot fall, cut through an entire forest, and defeated both Roman Torchwick and Neo at the same time, two of the most powerful and skilled fighters in the whole series. Well, she did have a little luck at the end there, but then she killed that Grimm with one blow and destroyed the airship she was on. I think she had victory in the bag.

So, you may be wondering, can anyone beat her? Well, yes. Her win-loss record isn't perfect, and there are many reasons why. She's exceptionally naïve and easily taken aback by surprise attacks. She's ready to throw down at a moment's notice, but stubbornly refuses to retreat when she's outmatched. Her Aura does have a limit, and after expiring, the next blow is sure to be fatal. And her fighting style and experience is almost all due to her use of Crescent Rose. If she loses her weapon, she's pretty much useless, only having had some very basic hand-to-hand combat training from Ozpin and Yang. And she can be overwhelmed by opponents faster than her, like the time she tried to use her Semblance to get past Mercury, only for him to knock her out of the Rose Petal Burst form with a perfectly placed kick. Finally, she's still a huntress-in-training, and has yet to reach the level of fighters like Qrow or her father.

But she's done more than anyone could have ever predicted at her age. Any monster that's out there, spreading fear, had better be afraid for its own life if Ruby Rose comes after it.

 _Disarmed and seemingly defeated, Ruby hangs off an airship five thousand feet above the ground as Neo and Torchwick circle above her, weapons out._

" _I may be a gambling man," Torchwick announces, "but even I know there are some bets you just don't take."_

 _Neo puts her sword to Ruby's throat._

" _Like it or not," Torchwick continues, "the people that hired me are going to change the world. You can't stop them. I can't stop them. You know the old saying: if you can't beat 'em-"_

 _Ruby reaches up and pushes a button on Neo's sword, transforming it back into a parasol. The wind currents instantly send Neo hurtling off the airship with a gasp._

" _Neo!" Torchwick cries out as Ruby climbs up._

" _I don't care what you say!" Ruby shouts at him. "We will stop them, and I will stop you! BET ON THAT!" She rushes ahead, full speed._

 **Ruby Rose:**

Full Name: Ruby Rose

Species: Human

Age: 16

Height: 5'2"/157 cm

Weight: 105 lb/48 kg

Occupation: Huntress-in-Training

Likes books

Likes cookies more

Likes heroes even more

Likes her lethal killing machine most of all

 **Crescent Rose:**

Carry Mode

Sniper Mode

Scythe Mode

-Normal Rounds

-Cross Rounds

-Ice Rounds

-Fire Rounds

-Electric Rounds

-Gravity Rounds

 **Abilities:**

Aura

~Superhuman Strength

~Superhuman Speed

~Superhuman Senses

~Superhuman Jumping

~Forcefield

~Shielding Projection

~Healing Factor

~Predication

~Semblance: Rose Petal Burst

Incredible skill

Knowledge in at least four martial arts

Pinpoint Accuracy

Some kind of Blood Manipulation

 **Feats:**

Once ate eleven cookies in five seconds flat

Sliced through a large tree with a swing from her scythe

Sliced through a forest over time w/ Crescent Rose

Kicked a man 37 feet away

Kicked a man through a metal door

Led two separate teams to victory against hundreds of Grimm and hopeless odds

Without Semblance, fired a bullet, then outran it

With Semblance, moved fast enough to be invisible to the trained eye

Cut off Tyrian's scorpion tail

Defeated the entirety of Team JNPR with one move in a food fight/training session

Killed off a pack of around 100 Beowolves with ease

Killed four Ursa with one shot

Killed at least eight Beowolves with one move

Killed a Gryphon with a single kick

Killed a Nevermore with a single slice

Was recoiled hard enough to get sent flying into the sky, hit a Nevermore hard enough to instantly kill it, and blasted back like it was nothing

W/ Crescent Rose shotgun blasts, dragged a Nevermore up the sheer side of a cliff and decapitated it

Defeated Roman Torchwick and Neo by herself (w/ a little good luck via Griffon)

Fought evenly against Mercury, Emerald, Hazel

Killed the crap out of an eight-headed city-block-sized snake

Walked from one nation to another

Traveled a city block in less in a second

Killed thousands of Grimm

Killed a Beringel

Rode a Nevermore, twice

Killed robots

Led evacuation of Beacon

Led both Team RWBY & Team RNJR

W/ Team RNJR, killed the Nuckelavee, deadliest Grimm ever

Matched and exceeded friends in combat

Survived a blow from an Ursa w/o activated Aura

Survived a fall from 5,000 feet up via shotgun recoil

Smashed through a 104 ton stone

Ran 3.7 blocks in one second

Destroyed a stone statue by falling on it, wasn't even affected

Survived reading a book based off of Twilight

Somehow managed to not be a Mary Sue

 **Weaknesses:**

Impulsive

Childish

Naïve

Show-off

Not fully trained

Speed can be outmatched

Over-reliant on Crescent Rose to deal damage

Aura has a limit

 **…**

 **Carnage:**

The world is full of victims. Whether they are victims of circumstances, of themselves, or of others, one thing is certain: as long as there are victims, there are monsters, for monsters create victims, and victims create monsters. And sometimes both are the case, especially when it comes to mass murdering aliens made out of blood bonded with psychotic serial killers.

Cletus Kasady was your average everyday kid. He went to average schools, had an average best friend, murdered his average grandma, tortured and maimed his average dog, and led his average dad to kill his average mom for trying to kill her average child for said torture of the average dog. Strange how everything comes full circle, isn't it? Believe it or not, Cletus was actually anything but average. I mean, when you realize his family is filled with nothing but psychotic murderers, what else did you expect him to be? As a child, he was obsessed with the ways of death, and, after everything you just read about, he was sent to an orphanage, where he got to experiment in more ways to kill people when he threw his crush in front of a moving bus, burned down his orphanage, and brutally murdered anyone who tried to escape. And he was just a kid! By the time the police finally caught up with him, he was a full-fledged adult and had committed dozens of murders over the years. Even though they could only get him on eleven of them, that was still enough to get several life sentences without parole. And so, the story ends, with yet another crazed criminal off the streets forever.

Or so it would have gone if somebody hadn't made the world's worst decision and gave this guy Eddie Brock as a cellmate. Now, as many of you know, Brock was host to the symbiote Venom. Venom was a Klyntar, also known as a symbiote, an alien race of creatures created by the deity Knull to basically expand his reach around the universe. But then they became all benevolent and boy scout-like and rebelled, trapping their creator in the center of a planet made out of symbiotes. Since then, all that symbiotes have wanted is a living host, someone who can join them and sustain them in exchange for their crazy shapeshifting powers. However, symbiotes are notoriously susceptible to taking on the mindsets of previous hosts - and the Venom symbiote had previously bonded with a bunch of evil and insane people, and then to Spiderman, before bonding with Eddie. This gave him all kinds of messed-up thoughts and confusion, which manifested itself as the sometimes-villain, sometimes-anti-hero Venom. Then the story got interesting. When Venom came to rescue Eddie from prison, it decided, for whatever ridiculous reason, to reproduce (asexually, of course) right then and there. Because everyone knows that if you're going to have a kid that you want to grow up to be a better man/symbiote than you are, you should totally leave him in a prison filled with the most insane and dangerous serial killers on the planet (especially if he's easily influenced by the thoughts of others). I mean, Venom knew what he was creating, right?

Regardless of whether he knew what he was doing or not, nobody could have predicted the horror that came from what he did. As it turned out, this new symbiote had retained all of his father's horrific experiences and personality traits – and none of the positive ones to provide perspective. This made it absolutely insane from pain and anger from the get-go, and the only release it felt was forcing others to feel that pain as well – particularly Spiderman, since Venom was kind of hatefully obsessed with him. The new symbiote immediately merged with Cletus through a cut on his arm and tried to take over his mind, only to stop when he and Cletus both realized just how like-minded they were. Somehow, these two's perspectives on the world, and…well, murder, were so similar that Cletus and the symbiote were able to merge on a molecular level, literally becoming one person. And thus the two died – and Carnage was born.

 _Carnage sees a couple in a car and, feeling the irresistible urge to kill, jumps right at them. "Locked doors? Closed windows? C'mon! It's CONVERTIBLE weather! LIVE A LITTLE!" Upon saying this, he shoots his arm through the glass, impaling both in one blow and, with a shake of his hand, reducing them to little more than blood splatters. "Okay, very little."_

Having received all the regular Klyntar abilities and more, Carnage has been granted incredible strength, amazing speed, and durability that's…just a little bit stupid. He's strong enough to pick up and throw a seventy-ton iron pillar, fast enough to outrace and catch bullets out of thin air, and, when solid, tough enough to be thrown through four solid oak trees in a row and act like it didn't even happen. Yes, I said "when solid." See, most symbiotes are liquid-like by nature, and can shapeshift and harden in order to deal actual damage (and take it) while with a host. However, Carnage is bonded to his host through his bloodstream, and, apparently, at a molecular level, which has turned Cletus and Carnage together into a weird, horrifying, humanoid mass of blood, human, and symbiote…but mostly blood. So he almost always has a consistency of something like melted Play-Doh or Oobleck. This means that while he can be torn apart by something as ordinary as a bullet, it can't hurt him. He's been blasted apart by missiles, sliced into dozens of pieces by Deadpool, smashed into by a train, and obliterated by a falling building, and every time, he's just come back, no different from before. He can't regenerate, per say, but so long as there's some scrap of him remaining, he can just…pull himself back together instantly or form whatever's left back into his body, barely any weaker than before. So you have a crazy strong monster made of blood that can't really be killed. That's terrifying.

It gets even worse when you realize that we've covered nowhere near his full list of abilities. The blood-created Carnage symbiote is a shapeshifter by nature, and so can do things like melt into a puddle to seep through air vents, remake his body to look exactly like Cletus's, or toughen up to become pretty much impossible to break (which is how he took the tree-throwing thing and didn't splatter all over). Worst of all, Carnage is a deranged serial killer whose one true passion is finding and experimenting with new ways to murder people, of which there's a seemingly endless amount thanks to that shapeshifting.

 _Carnage stands up and shouts out for all to hear. "My name is Cletus Kasady! I kill people and I LOVE IT! I know nine million ways to kill a body and I love EVERY ONE OF THEM. All dull day every day right up until I hit the hay I think of bodies! Bodies slit right up the middle and shared across a hundred nice little gardens!"_

 _He continues talking for a while before coming to his point. "You're probably asking why I kill. Well, simple answer. It's PRETTY. Waking up in the morning and knowing you're going to kill someone... it's a beautiful thing! Makes me feel like a gunship, like my engine's only turning over when I'm moving and killing…I've told you about the worst things in the world, because that's what the world's made of! EVERYTHING IS SICK! Am I getting THROUGH to you? EVERYTHING IS SICK AND I LOVE IT!"_

Carnage's most common way to kill people is with tendrils. His body can form dozens of massive tendrils reaching over two miles in length that can pierce straight through flesh, rock, and even metal like they're nothing. Said tendrils are capable of smashing apart stone pillars, knocking out Spiderman with a single blow, and outracing explosions, which generally move at over 6,000 MPH. That last one's particularly important, since Carnage can transport his mind and being through any extension of himself, tendrils included. While he himself can move up to 2,400 MPH, his tendrils are clearly much faster. Heck, on more than one occasion, they've moved fast enough to appear invisible to the human eye, making them able to potentially move up to 9,000 MPH. Seriously, you could be 145 miles away and Carnage could appear next to you in less than a second. Well, he could if his tendrils could stretch that far, which they can't, but you get the idea. He can also shapeshift his body, forming webbing so strong, not even Spiderman or, in some cases, even Venom can escape from it, or he can just crawl on walls the same way Spiderman does. He can also form dozens of different weapons out of himself, whether they be as simple as swords or axes or, on one occasion, as complicated as a freaking chaingun! How is that even possible?! He also commonly throws dozens, even hundreds of metal-piercing projectiles at his enemies, essentially making his own bullets out of…himself. And, with a pierce via tendril, he can show a person the world from his perspective, almost always driving them insane, or he can release a portion of himself inside the victim, taking control of them, and even, should he somehow be destroyed, infecting their blood with his symbiote, essentially remaking himself from inside their body. It's twice as disturbing as it sounds. He can also change size at will, shrinking to the size of a small puddle or growing to the size of a skyscraper, though his speed does take a significant dip as he grows larger.

With all that insanity backed up by all that power, he's won battles against plenty of powerful foes and, over his years of murder, supposedly killed over three thousand people. He frequently goes up against and defeats both Spiderman and Venom, and sometimes both at the same time. Once, the two punched him full force at the same time, and Carnage just caught their punches in his arm and pushed them back. Keep in mind that Spiderman can catch airplanes and Venom can hold up massive carnival rides. Oh, yeah, and he then knocked out both Spiderman and Venom with one blow. He's able to keep up with and even predict almost any opponent, including other insane people like Deadpool – a dude who's so crazy, not even Taskmaster, whose literal power is predicting his opponent's moves, can predict him. Actually, Carnage is so unpredictable that while he was able to predict Deadpool's thoughts and movements, Deadpool wasn't able to predict his. This is further helped by the fact that his suit can sense everything around it in the same way we can see everything around us. As the official Death Battle has said, it's pretty much exactly as if the suit was made of eyeballs. He can even see through his tendrils, weapons, and projectiles! And even then, his shapeshifting is still capable of more – he can transform into a living cage, split into multiple pieces and reform, turn his arms into massive wall-like shields that are almost impenetrable, glide through the air, or just sprout wings and fly! But even if you are able to avoid his tendrils, duck under his flight, dodge his self-made gunfire, and not be seen by the all-seeing suit, if he wants to kill you, you still aren't safe. I presume you're using the internet to read this, right? Well, that's unfortunate, because, due to all the electrolytes in blood, Carnage is able to travel through electronic pulses – literally entering a computer, traveling through the internet, and coming out of the computer of the person he wants to kill. Yes. That actually happened. And no, it doesn't make any scientific sense.

He's powerful and deadly enough to defeat other symbiotes, Man-Wolf, Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Nightcrawler, Wizard, Magneto, Scarlet Spider, Wolverine, and even Deadpool. During his and Wolvie's fight, things weren't really looking so good for Carnage, so he decided the best course of action would be to bite through his bone claws, which are tougher than most metals. It…worked, surprisingly. He also fought Nova, a being who can move faster than light and destroy planets. However, it should be noted that Nova's helmet, which is where he gets his power from, had been heavily damaged in an earlier fight, so he was nowhere near his full power when facing against Carnage. Still, the fact that Carnage managed to survive at all is impressive, but to be expected. After all, we're talking about a guy who's strong enough to throw around a helicopter, obliterate a one-story building, and smash straight through a 94 ton boulder like it was thin air! One time, Spiderman tried to resist his strength by attaching himself to a concrete wall, but Carnage just pulled hard enough to smash the wall to pieces and grabbed him anyway. He's outpaced and dodged soundwaves, gunfire, and even the occasional laser blast! He's insane enough to outwit Batman, freak out the Joker, and even try to possess the Silver Surfer, an incredibly powerful being his entire race is programmed on a genetic level to be afraid of.

But his deadliest trait is his sheer indestructibility. He just…won't die. He's survived radiation, asphyxiation, decapitation, suffocation, separation, bifurcation, emancipation, near-incineration, electrocution, being blasted apart by missiles, being blasted apart by grenades, being blasted apart by solar energy, being blasted apart by the unibeam, being blasted apart by land mines, being blasted apart from everything in an Iron Man suit's arsenal, being blasted apart by a C4 bomb, being blasted apart by a swallowed bomb, being blasted apart by a gene bomb, being blasted apart by a living bomb, bombardment from microwaves, bombardment from the Thing's punches, bombardment from giant blocks of concrete, bombardment from five symbiotes, bombardment from sound guns, bombardment from the Hulk, and being ripped in half by Sentry and left floating in outer space for a year.

At this point, you're probably asking "What can take this guy down?" The answer is: not much. After his first escape, Spiderman had to enlist the help of Venom and the Fantastic Four just to imprison him again, and, when he escaped from a different prison some years down the line, he was able to fight, defeat, and kill the four members of the Mercury Team, a team of special forces trained specifically to take down symbiotes, each of which had a member of the symbiote Hybrid bonded to them. Basically, he managed to defeat four other symbiotes at once while they were bonded to people specifically designed and trained to kill other symbiotes. That's insane!

Carnage is unstoppable – until high-frequency soundwaves or fire enters the picture. These two things are able to force Carnage to reform Cletus's body and separate from him – or, well, they used to be able to. The fire weakness still applies, but he got rid of the sound weakness and instead became weak to some sort of magic that will probably matter exactly 0% of the time. Still, even if the two are separated, Carnage is so incredibly bonded with Cletus's blood, he's sometimes able to come back out of him anyway, even from something as minor as a paper cut. And even if you separate the two and manage to completely kill Cletus, the Carnage symbiote will survive and seek a new host, like the time he took over Green Goblin. Together, they did all kinds of crazy things, like defeating Spiderman, Human Torch, Silk, Clash, and Miles Morales all at the same time, surviving a 125 ton explosion, defeating Anti-Venom (the most powerful symbiote…just ever), and easily taking on mountains of fire and sound. Even when there's only a drop of him left, he can always use the blood of a victim to come back – though the symbiote by itself can definitely be killed by enough heat or, well, anything that can completely disintegrate it or remove it from existence. Also, he's not perfectly better than his parent symbiote – he doesn't have a Spider Sense, for instance, and still hasn't learned how to turn invisible or change color. However, just like his parent, he does likely require a steady diet of phenethylamine, which he can typically receive by eating his victims' brains. Yep. To top it all off, he's bonded to Cletus's blood on a molecular level, so anything that can kill blood (aside from poisons) can probably kill him.

But he's shown, over and over, again, that killing him is way harder than the heroes give him credit for. No heroes and no villains have been able to forever stop him from completing his one true wish – to just kill everyone and everything for no real reason. Carnage is easily one of most terrifying monsters in Marvel history.

 _Carnage stands over the doctor of the mental institution that has been treating him for days. His tendrils are out; he's ready to murder. "Any last words, sweetie?"_

 _The doctor stands, unyielding. "Let me help you, Mr. Kasady. I'm your only hope. I can ease your pain. I've devoted my entire life to curing people like you and ridding the world of serial killers!"_

 _Carnage tilts his head sadistically. "I am deeply touched by your obvious sincerity, Doctor Pournella. Unfortunately…" his head snaps back into place as he spits out his next words. 'Your entire life has been a sick joke! A TOTAL WASTE! Not only have you irresponsibly released the worst serial killer of all, but I'm going to CELEBRATE my newfound freedom by SLAYING EVERY INHABITANT WITHIN YOUR PRECIOUS INSTITUTE!"_

 _He sends a tendril flying through her head and slinks off to begin a new murder spree._

 **Carnage:**

[Host – Symbiote]

Full Name: Cletus Kasady - Carnage

Species: Human – Klyntar

Age: ? – ? minus at least 25

Height: 6'1"/185 cm – N/A

Weight: 190 lb/86 kg – N/A

Occupation: Mass Murderer – Mass Murderer

Likes heavy metal

Likes brains more

Likes murder even more

Likes his stuffed teddy bear most of all

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Stamina

Superhuman Senses

Superhuman Evilness

Regeneration-ish

Shapeshifting

Telepathy

Wall-Crawling

Cloning-ish

Possession-ish

360-degree Perception

Some kind of Blood Manipulation

 **Feats:**

Defeated Deadpool

Defeated Iron Man

Defeated Spiderman

Defeated Venom

Defeated Scarlet Spider

Defeated Agent Venom

Defeated Hybrid

Defeated Scream

Defeated Man-Wolf

Defeated Mr. Fantastic

Defeated Nightcrawler w/ OHKO

Defeated Wizard

Defeated Magneto

Defeated Wolverine

Defeated Anti-Venom

Defeated Toxin

Defeated a lot of other people

Killed 3,000 people

Killed a guy through a computer screen

Infected the entire Avengers, turning them all into more Carnages

Escaped from prison at least forty times

Lifted a 50 ton tank

Broke through an 94 ton boulder

Tossed a helicopter

Threw a 70-ton pillar

Did some more strength stuff

Dodged lasers

Outran soundwaves

Caught up to bullets

Equaled speed with a 2400 MPH missile

Dodged hundreds of bullet at once

Tendrils moved faster than the eye can see

Survived just about everything you can imagine

Went toe-to-toe with underpowered Nova

 **Weaknesses:**

Fire is a huge weakness

Chthonic Magic is a huge weakness

Anything that kills blood

No resistance to magic spells or transmogrification

Way weaker without a host

Requires a steady diet of phenethylamine

 **…**

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all – or until RWBY Volume 6 comes out and changes everything we know about Ruby. Who cares! It's time for a Death Battle!

 **…**

Ruby wandered through the town of Ilkton, looking for anything that could contain medical supplies. The rest of Team RNJR had stayed behind at the last town to protect Qrow from Grimm – that poisoned wound was getting worse by the hour, and taking him all the way here to a potentially Grimm-infested village was just too risky. Since she was team leader and the fastest, she'd elected to scout ahead and bring back anything she could find.

But there was nothing.

It was strange – the buildings weren't destroyed. The well still drew up water. Some of the places were still freshly painted. But nobody was here. Why had they all fled?

She came upon the town hall. It was massive – probably because it was also a sort of bunker. Many towns did that – building one important building to also be able to serve as a bunker in times of huge Grimm invasions. Maybe this is where everyone was – or, if not, the bunker had to have plenty of medical supplies in it. She tentatively opened the front door. "Hello?"

Somewhere in the darkness, there was quiet laughter. Good, somebody was here. She grabbed a match and lit some candles, lighting up a good portion of the room, though plenty of it was still covered in darkness. Up ahead, she made out a small patch of space in the darkness that looked almost like a hole. They had to be stairs leading to the bunker. She stepped ahead to the edge of what she could see. "Is anyone there?"

"I'm right here," said a voice from the darkness.

It sounded…off, but Ruby couldn't worry about that right now. "Can you help? I need medical supplies!"

"You're not bleeding. Who is bleeding?" The voice almost sang it, which sounded kind of creepy, but it was really her only hope now.

"My name is Ruby Rose. My uncle was poisoned. The rest of my team stayed behind at Kuroyuri to look after him. Please, we just need some supplies – just enough to last until we get to Haven. Please, will you help?"

"Of course," the voice slithered. A human hand – female, looked like – stretched itself out from the darkness. "Shake my hand."

Ruby excitedly ran up to the hand and grabbed it. Surprisingly, she felt no resistance. When she pulled on the hand to shake it, the body attached came into the light – and Ruby screamed. It was terrifying. Eyes were gouged out, the throat was slit, there were gaping holes all around her face, and several horrible blood-soaked tendrils wrapped themselves around her forehead and arm. Then a face out of her worst nightmares shoved itself out from behind the body. It was a mass of blood, bone, and teeth. It didn't look human. It barely looked alive. But it spoke in that same voice she'd been hearing.

"Tricked you!" He laughed maniacally as he leapt over her head and ran for the door. "Fresh blood awaits!"

 _A Grimm._ Profe- er, Doctor Oobleck had always said that the longer they lived, the smarter they became. She couldn't let him get to Qrow!

Ruby burst into rose petals and zoomed around Carnage, stopping in front of him. She pulled out Crescent Rose and instantly turned it to Scythe Mode. "You'll have to get through me, first!"

"Snack, snack!" Carnage yelled out as if reciting a schoolground chant. He laughed so hard, he threw his head back – and somehow accidentally snapped his own neck. One twist later, though, and it was like nothing had happened. "THE SNACK ATTACKS!"

 **-FIGHT!-**

Carnage leapt forward, arms immediately forming into double-axes, ready to impale Ruby through the head. But she wasn't so easily caught. Ruby burst into rose petals and moved behind Carnage. She swung Crescent Rose at him, but Carnage saw her perfectly well, and leaped into the air above her. He launched several tendrils at her, but she just zoomed out of the way. He threw out hundreds of blood bullets, only to watch Ruby twirl her scythe around so precisely, it caught and destroyed every bullet. Carnage grew seven tendrils and shaped them like arms, then launched a huge flurry of punches at Ruby, striking absolutely everywhere. Ruby, however, thanks to her training, was able to block and deflect every punch that came near her. He lashed out his tongue in a surprise maneuver – and Ruby sliced right through it faster than he could predict. The fallen half dissolved into rose petals and Carnage dissolved into goo, sliding under Ruby and unleashing a flurry of tendrils, every one of which Ruby quickly and deftly avoided. Carnage reformed and formed a sword out of his body, slicing and dicing away at where Ruby should be – but she ducked under and jumped over every swing with grace and ease.

In absolute fury, Carnage screamed out "WHAT ARE YOU? WHY CAN'T I HIT YOU?!"

Ruby backflipped out of the next swing and decided to hit back for once. She swung her scythe and cut right through the blood-sword, then shot out several bullets into Carnage. Carnage took the bullets as several rose petals went flying out and laughed. "Mmm! Tastes like rosewater! WHAT DO YOU TASTE LIKE?" He spat the bullets out back at Ruby, with them moving just as fast as when she fired them. Ruby sliced through both with two moves, flicked her wrist to transform her scythe into a glaive, and rushed forwards at speeds breaking the sound barrier, impaling Carnage through the chest.

Rose petals spilled out of the other side of him as he gasped in pain. "Yowie! That thing's dangerous!" In a surprise move, he threw his arms around her, coating her middle half in blood and tendrils. Ruby gasped and tried to escape, but his grip was too strong. "But I'm even more dangerous!" He formed an axe on his head and slammed it into her face. He expected the thing to stick into her head, separating it permanently, but instead it stopped right at her skin and didn't go any further. "What? Why aren't you dead? It's so fun to be dead!"

"Let's see how you like it!" Ruby shouted back, and pressed the trigger. The recoil from the shot forced the glaive backwards and caused Ruby to tear through Carnage's arms and go flying back. Carnage cried out and jumped at her. Big mistake. Ruby jumped and met him in the air, where she proceeded to slice right through him with a swing of her scythe. Carnage pulled himself back together instantly, minus what little had been turned to petals, but Ruby used his head as a springboard, jumping higher into the air. As she went soaring up, she transformed Crescent Rose into Sniper Mode, pointed it at Carnage's head with one hand, and shot him four times straight through the eye. Carnage hit the ground rolling, and stood back up, no real difference to him.

Ruby landed perfectly. "You're a lot harder to kill than you look."

"I know! Glorious, right?" Carnage launched a tendril at Ruby, who jumped over it, but as it passed right by her, he transported his being through the tendril, instantly appearing right next to Ruby. He grabbed her out of the air and pinned her to the ground. With several blood-soaked webs, he tied her down and began whaling on her face. Swords, axes, maces, tendrils, claws, nothing worked. Sure, she was being hit faster than she could react, but it all just bounced off of her skin. "Why won't you just die?!"

Ruby burst into rose petals, escaped the webbing, and reformed several yards away. She cocked Crescent Rose, still in Sniper Form, and pointed it at Carnage. "You think this is a game?! There are people out there, being hurt! I know that's what you're made for, but you're smarter than the rest of them! Can't you understand that killing is wrong?!"

"Wrong, right, wrong, right," Carnage sneezed out. "That stuff changes all the time. 'Oh, you can't kill that guy! Wait, he's a murderer, you can! Wait, he only kills in self-defense, you can't! Wait, he's about to try to kill you, you can! Wait, his kid's here, you can't! Wait, we're at war, you can!' WHO CARES? I skip all that cuddly-huddly junk! I do what EVERYONE wants to do! Killing is fun! It's crazy! It's chaos! KILLING IS WHO I AM!" He threw forward fifty tendrils at once, covering so much space so fast, there was no way Ruby could avoid them.

She didn't.

She held her sniper rifle behind her and fired, using the recoil to dash ahead at enormous speeds. She fired again, and again. She hit plenty of tendrils full force, but all of them bounced off of her Aura. She reached a shocked Carnage and held the point of the gun up to his head. "I don't care what you say! You can reason! You can think! You're not like the others. Deep down, you have to know the truth. You can't be so broken inside that you like doing this!"

"Broken?! I'm more complete than YOU, dearie!"

Ruby fired the bullet, but Carnage just threw his head to the left, forcing the shot to miss completely despite being fired point-blank. "You want proof?! I'll show you something you'll never forget!" He jumped into the air and threw out a bloody web, grappling to the ceiling and swinging into the dark.

Ruby put in her Fire Dust Rounds and shot out one, granting some light to the dark for a split second. All she saw was a set of stairs leading down into darkness. That must have been where he's gone. She grabbed a candle and made her way downward, being exceptionally careful so as not to be surprise attacked. Her Aura could take a fair bit more, but not enough to guarantee her life if this conflict lasted a whole lot longer. She needed to find him, and end him, fast. As she came to the bottom of the stairs, she noticed that there was a doorway where the iron door had been forced off of its hinges and lay to the side, broken – and badly dented all over. Something had given it an incredible beating. Right next to the door, there was a light switch. So, this bunker had a dust-infused light of sorts – and, given the place's condition, it very well might still be working. She flipped the switch, and dim lights began to shine.

And they shone on a sight so gut-wrenching it forced Ruby back and had her trying desperately not to vomit.

Bodies…bodies were stacked everywhere. Disassembled, mutilated, with organs, throats, ribcages tossed around the place and stuck to the walls like flypaper. Right next to her were two bodies, a couple, huddled together, with all their skin from the shoulders up carefully filed off so you could see exactly how they died – both had their tongues ripped out, and stuffed down the other's throat, choking them to death. Other people had blood pouring out of cavities where their ears belonged, or their hands forcefully shoved through their own throats, or had their facial features rearranged and mismatched with other people, like a horrible Mr. Potato Head set.

And from somewhere, she heard a voice.

 _Poor little flies_

 _Never said goodby_

 _Drawn to the blood_

 _Caught in the flood_

Ruby transformed Crescent Rose into a scythe again. "You…did you do this?!"

Carnage roped down to meet her. "I know nine million different ways to kill a body, and the only thing I love more than using them is finding new ones! See, there!" He pointed a quivering, bloody finger at the couple and laughed. "They're kissing!"

Ruby noticed something…interesting. He was smaller than when they started this. Only slightly, but still. "You…really are just a monster."

"Guilty! Guilty! GUILTY! THAT'S WHAT I AM! We know the truth! We know what we are!" He stepped forward, and, having seen all the terrible things he'd done, Ruby stepped back, suddenly afraid. "You know it, too. I see it in your mind. Black out the sky. All things must die."

"Why?!"

"WHY? BECAUSE IT MAKES ME HAPPY! They saw the creatures, those black bears and wolves, and they saw me kill them. The creatures didn't leave a body, so I decided to kill something that does!" He laughed again. "They tried to escape. Tried to hide! BUT I SAW THEM! I SAW THEIR BLOOD! And now…I SEE YOU!"

Carnage leaped at Ruby, claws slashing at empty air before she burst into petals and dashed away. She unleashed several rounds into him – ouch, fire! That hurt far more than anything she'd tried before. And it still left those rose petals! That was annoying – whenever she turned part of him to roses, he couldn't call it back. But he could kill her. That sounded…delicious. He remembered now. A few of the people down here…they'd been hard to kill, too. Not as hard as this little girl was, but his stabs still bounced off of them for a bit. So, just like any other human, if he hit her enough, one day, she'd break. Delicious.

She swung her scythe at him, and, for once, he decided he didn't want to be carved like a wild turkey on indian-murder day. He toughened himself up to become nearly impenetrable, causing the scythe's blade to try to cut him through the shoulder – and come to a grinding halt. He laughed. "Can't bend me, can't break me! Can't mend me, can't take me!"

Ruby fired the scythe, and pulled it down with all her strength. The recoil plus her added physical abilities forced the blade to slice right through the symbiote without resistance.

Carnage's top half went flying upwards as more rose petals flew through the air. That annoying little dead girl. He pulled himself back together. "I'LL KILL YOU!" He formed a chaingun out of his blood and began firing. Thousands of blood bullets rammed ahead, aimed directly for her. The girl wasn't expecting it. A bunch of them hit her before she could do anything, but it wasn't long before she put up her hands and the bullets bounced off of some kind of invisible shield. He hated shields. They stopped people from dying and sometimes got stuck in his head. Wait, what was happening? Oh, she'd jumped onto the wall and started zooming around as that mass of rose petals. He turned and kept shooting away, his bullets just barely missing her at all times. She leaped at him suddenly, scythe pointed gun-end at him, and he instantly called back all the splattered blood bullets to him. They formed a blockage in front of him that look like his face – he liked that very much. All her bullets, even the fire ones, just bounced off of the blockage, until she herself hit it, jumped off, and shot it with a bolt of electricity. Carnage dropped the blockage as he fell to the floor, writhing in pain. It didn't damage him, really – but it hurt…so bad… ugh! Can't…lose…to little girl! Must beat her! Must EAT her!

Ruby unloaded several more electric rounds into Carnage as he was on the floor, but he still managed to get up and attack. Twelve tendrils shot at her faster than the eye could see. She instantly cut right through them all with one swipe from the scythe and watched as the ends turned to petals. "You're made of blood. I can kill you if I just keep hitting you!"

"I can do that, too!" Carnage shouted excitedly. "We'll both be all blood soon!"

Ruby switched to her Cross Rounds and tore ahead at incredible speeds. She sliced straight through Carnage, sending him flying into two places. Before he could blink, Ruby shot two explosive rounds into both halves, scattered them both into pieces. Carnage called all his scraps together, but as they were about to join, Ruby summoned an Aura Shield between them, refusing them passage. She used the recoil from a shot to send her flying at the scraps and sliced and diced each one several times. As she fell back down to the ground, Carnage was finally able to reform – but the petals had taken a toll, and he was nearly half the size that he was when they'd began their battle.

Ruby stood back as Carnage shouted "Hey! That almost hurt!" He cackled and declared "That thing you have is pretty dangerous! I want one! Actually," Ruby watched in horror as one of his arms formed itself into an exact duplicate of Crescent Rose, "I have one!"

Ruby launched herself forward with a shotgun blast and swung with all her might, but her blade was stopped by the blade of the fake Crescent Rose. This…Blood Rose fired off several potshots at her with blood bullets, two catching Ruby by surprise. Her Aura flickered – it couldn't take a whole lot more. She fired her own gun, carefully and precisely hitting every bullet out of the air – but as each one splattered, it moved past the rounds and reformed itself, only slightly smaller. Ruby panicked and leapt up into the sky, but was shocked to find that Carnage had sprouted wings and done the same, and the two matched scythes again. Carnage, in all fairness, was a surprisingly fast learner – capable of emulating almost every move he'd seen Ruby make thus far with his Blood Rose. He spun it to block the bullets, twisted it around to capture her weapon and turn its weight against her, and used recoil from false gunshots to add power and speed to his strikes. And every time Ruby summoned all of her strength to cut the thing, it just reformed itself immediately. After catching Ruby's blade for the umpteenth time, he slid underneath both scythes and transported the Blood Rose to him right away, catching Ruby in the stomach and throwing her against a wall. Ruby burst into rose petals and zoomed ahead to catch him again, but Carnage had become used to her tactics now. He took aim and, with a blood bullet moving faster than a mortal eye could track, shot her out of the air. She fell down into a pile of mutilated bodies with a shriek and a cry.

"Ooh, my snack is inside my other snacks! How delicious! Delectable! Divine! Delightful! Duh…sgustingly good?" He cracked his small neck, and stretched it out. "Come on out! It's time for me to kill you! Carnage is hungry!"

Ruby was afraid.

Her Aura was really, really low, and she was facing a monster unlike anything she'd ever heard about. It was smarter than any other Grimm out there, stronger than anything she'd faced, and impossible to kill.

And it had already killed all these people.

An eye popped out of a severed head next to her and landed on her hand. She shook it off in an instant, but the motion accidentally stirred her position. She slid down into horrible swamp-like amounts of blood, organs, and other gore. She tried to scramble up as fast as possible, nearly fainting from the smell, look, and feeling alone. Unfortunately, her attempts were seen by Carnage.

"There you are!" He jumped into the air and raised the Blood Rose. "Come greet your friendly neighborhood Carnage-Man!"

Ruby screamed.

And everything went white.

Carnage burned. He screamed in unbelievable pain, and was thrust backwards. He smashed his claws into the floor to keep from being moved – but he didn't have claws anymore. In horror, he looked down to see a human hand where his should be. He felt himself being ripped apart, dissolved, and destroyed. He screamed. He shouted. He _pleaded_ with the white void that was erasing him.

But it didn't answer.

And he burned.

Ruby slowly opened her eyes, her head throbbing and her body aching. She slid down from the pile of dead bodies and tried to take a step, but fell to her knees. It hurt. She hadn't meant to use the Silver Eyes, but she was glad she had. That creature had needed to be stopped, and this is what had been required to do it. With a good deal of effort, she managed to grab Crescent Rose from off the ground. She looked up, looking for the statue of her foe, but instead was greeted by a man, knees on the floor, gasping for breath, muttering "Carnage…" over and over. With a jolt, she suddenly realized that the Grimm…Carnage, it was called, had been possessing this man. She walked over, stumbling a few times, and bent down.

"Hey, it's okay. He's gone now."

Cletus looked around the room, bleary-eyed, then back at her. "Why…why did you do it?"

Ruby glanced around and saw all the dead bodies once more. "Oh! No! I didn't do that! It was that Grimm. He possessed you. Used you to do what he wanted."

Cletus blinked rapidly. "You…me…Grimm? I…did-"

Ruby shushed him. "It's not your fault. You're free of him now. There's no more Carnage."

Cletus snarled. Surprising Ruby, he grasped the blade of the scythe and sliced open his hand, spilling blood everywhere. "You idiot! I AM CARNAGE!"

The symbiote spawned from his blood and wrapped itself around him once more, now normal-sized again. Ruby backed up, absolutely shocked, as the monster in front of her laughed. "Can you guess who's about to die? Here's a hint: she's red as blood, white as death, black as hate, and yellow as sickness! Get it? CAUSE YOU'RE SCARED!" He grabbed Crescent Rose, flung it aside, and then snatched her with several tendrils that formed together as one giant arm. He spun her around, and around, and around like the blade of a helicopter, moving at speeds way faster than sound, before launching her up into the air, where she smashed straight through the first floor, then through the roof, and then fell all the way back down, landing on the floor next to Carnage hard enough to form a crater. Her Aura cracked and shattered – it was gone.

Ruby, in incredible amounts of pain, managed to stand up. "Why…"

"Huh? Still alive? Gee whiz, Batman, this kid's one tough flower!"

"Why…are you doing this?! You're not a Grimm…you're a human. SO WHY?!"

Carnage stared at her. "I'm gonna explain it one last time, but only because I'm about to murder you to death. Actually, no, I'm not going to explain it. Hold on – I got some words I wanna stab in your ears." With that, he threw out two tendrils that entered through Ruby's ears and, with a scream, pierced her brain.

And she saw everything.

His history.

His power.

His world.

"Now, tell me, sweetums," Carnage mockingly sang to her, "isn't that just grand? The world calls me crazy, but it's the crazy one! Humans murder each other every day, inside and out! It's in their nature! Their blood! All those 'heroes' try to stop me, but I'm just doing what everyone else is doing – what they did to me! What's so bad about that?!"

The last time he did this, a professor with an IQ of 200 ended up becoming a cannibalistic murder machine. He didn't expect this girl to fare much better. He waited for the first sweet little evil words from her mouth.

"You're wrong."

Not the words he was looking for. "Excuse me?"

Ruby grabbed his tendrils and ripped them out, shutting her eyes to block out the pain. "I realize that the world's full of pain and suffering. That it's hard to go through life without feeling like you're lost, or that the battle for good is hopeless. But if I gave up every time I lost something, I wouldn't be where I am today. I'd never have the chance to see the good things in life. Yeah, you do what a lot of lost people do, but that's why heroes are always standing in your way. That's why we exist – to try to make the world a better place. And we can't do that by embracing the worst of what it is now. You aren't proud of your kills. You don't really love killing. You're hiding. Hiding from what might happen if you'd just stop trying to gain everything you can from how miserable you are. I've been through what you have. But I got over it. That's your problem – why you always feel the need to kill. That hole in you will never be filled – not until you get over what's happened in the past and look towards what's happening right now. That's who you are. Not Cletus. Not Carnage. Just a broken man who doesn't want to be fixed."

The horrible thing was, every sentence she said drilled a new hole in Carnage's mind. She was right. Down to the letter, down to the detail, she was right. Of course she was. He'd shown her exactly who he was – and she was able to deflate that being with nothing but a few words. That's something nobody, not Spiderman, not Venom, not any psychiatrist, nobody, had been able to do.

She was one heck of a girl.

And for a moment, he almost wished he could feel guilty.

"I'm not going to change because of some weepy little anime speech!" he screamed at her.

Ruby nodded. "I know, and I'm sorry. I had to try. That's what heroes do, after all."

"Some hero! Even a mosquito has hurt me more than you!"

Ruby opened her eyes. "This mosquito just saw your past. And she knows how to kill you."

Carnage backed up. Crap.

Ruby burst into rose petals and moved to grab Crescent Rose. The moment she had her hand on the scythe, she zoomed away, narrowly dodging a barrage of now-very-lethal blood bullets. She switched out the clip for an Ice Dust one. She then used her semblance to her fullest, calling on the scraps of power and energy she had left, to run around Carnage fast enough to send him into the air via wind tornado, then rushed right above him. As he fell, and before he could react, she shot him full of Ice Dust Rounds, freezing the blood-soaked…well, blood-soaked everything into place inside giant ice cubes. By the time she only had three left, Carnage had hit the ground and only his head was free. He spat out what were inevitably his last words.

"I hate you."

Ruby froze his head to join with the rest of the ice, and then, while in the midst of falling down, switched to her Cross Rounds, switched to Sniper Mode, and fired all of them, rapid-fire, down on Carnage.

The ice shattered into dust. By the time Ruby hit the ground, there was nothing left of the once-horrifying monster.

"I did it," she muttered, surprised.

She had a feeling of overwhelming relief.

For about five seconds.

A voice sang in her head.

 _Blood red roses fill my dreams_

 _And bring me to your grave, you pest_

 _White for death is always yearning_

 _Burdened by a life suppressed_

 _Black the ceased one brings in shadows_

 _Yellow, sickly, burned, cold_

Ruby's eyes went wide.

 _It's me_

 _I'm starving_

 _And your brain I'm carving_

Thick red tendrils burst out of her ears, and Ruby screamed in pain and horror. It was inside of her! It must have gotten into her bloodstream while attached to her mind. She only had one option. She had to use the Silver Eyes agai-

With a burst of might, the tendrils shoved her eyeballs out of her head and climbed through the sockets. Together with the other tendrils, they carved a hole into the top of her head and popped it off. The Carnage symbiote crawled out through her mouth, fully reformed due to a nice bath in her bloodstream, and, with one large, clawed hand, plucked her brain right out of her head.

 **-KO!-**

Carnage gave the organ a tentative lick. "Oh, what sweet thoughts! Delicious!" Opening up his mouth, he swallowed the whole thing in one go. Letting out a healthy burp, he turned his gaze to the open door leading upstairs and muttered "Right…more things to play with. I broke this one." He melted into a puddle and slinked off towards Kuroyuri.

 **…**

Ugh. That's disgusting. Never make me write that again, okay?

You know, I actually wanted the hero to prevail this time. If Carnage was a RWBY villain, the show would have come up with some way for her to escape or win, of course. But this show isn't RWBY, nor is it about what I want – it's about the truth. And the truth is…this fight was a fair bit closer than I anticipated.

Carnage did have many advantages, but so did Ruby. Carnage held a wider variety of attacks, but Ruby held more destructive abilities and weapons. Carnage was stronger, but Ruby was more experienced in fighting opponents capable of taking her out. Carnage could infect Ruby with a tendril, but not through projectiles, and he needed to get through Ruby's Aura first – not an easy feat. Ruby did have the solid disadvantage of being worthless if she lost her weapon, although it's unlikely Carnage would think to exploit that. She also held a disadvantage by…just being so naïve. She's seen some dark stuff, yeah, but nothing like what Carnage has done, and she's been plenty horrified of just what she's seen, even on occasion reduced to tears. It'd be easy for Carnage to get a psychological advantage. Also, Ruby's way more used to fighting in a team, where she has multiple friends to get her out of trouble and cover her faults. She didn't have that here, and Carnage is used to working alone. Heck, half the time, if he does have a team, he ends up killing them off, or at least trying to. It's pretty doubtful Ruby could have defeated the Nuckelavee by herself, for example, a creature to which Carnage has a surprising number of similarities to (but he's also…far superior). And her Silver Eyes likely wouldn't have worked on Carnage, as he's not a Grimm. He's more human than anything else, in fact, and they don't seem to work on humans. Even if the symbiote itself was considered a Grimm, Grimm bonded with humans don't suffer nearly as much as Grimm on their own when it comes to the Silver Eyes, as shown during her second display of the power against Cinder's new Grimm arm. Cinder held some pain in the arm, but was up and using it in just a couple minutes. Since Carnage has recovered from similarly intense blasts that affected him as much as this would due to exploiting his weaknesses of sound and fire, there's no real reason to say he couldn't here.

The biggest issue here was that neither could really hurt the other. Whatever attacks Carnage used would just bounce off of Ruby's Aura, assuming she didn't avoid them, and whatever Ruby tried to do against Carnage just couldn't do any real lasting damage. She did, technically, have three possible ways to kill the guy. 1. If she gathered up all of her explosive Cross Rounds and all of her Fire Dust Rounds, made a bomb out of them, and threw it at Carnage, the detonation and heat could POSSIBLY be enough to kill him. POSSIBLY. 2. If she was somehow able to freeze every single part of him (highly unlikely, since he's always stretched out and/or leaking everywhere) and somehow reduce all the ice to dust so fine that there was no Carnage to come back, then, yeah, he'd be dead. 3. Just keep hacking and slashing away with that scythe.

Obviously, the first two were highly unlikely and the chances of Carnage letting them happen or, heck, Ruby even thinking of them is remote at best, so, on we go to hacking and slashing. Now, this is an interesting detail – Crescent Rose is somehow, through Ruby's Semblance, capable of transforming blood into rose petals. Since Carnage is made up of blood at a molecular level, theoretically Ruby could eventually transform him completely into rose petals. No more blood, no more symbiote, no more Carnage. So it's important to see just how long that would take, and to see if Carnage had the means to kill her before she accomplished her goal. And that's where we get into what breaks this seemingly unbreakable match. Both have a limit to their durability, and, factoring in Crescent Rose, it's based on, honestly, a Health Bar-like system. That leaves the ultimate question as this: Who could kill the other first?

Here's a casual reminder that, while their fighting styles are decidedly different, both are around the same speed level (Mach 3, possibly lightning if you over-scaled and over-hyped them up, Mach 12 for short distances via Semblance and Tendrils), and both are used to getting in dozens of full-powered hits in just a few seconds. Ruby could do this with incredible travel speed, and Carnage could do this with surprise strikes and stuns. Basically, they should theoretically be able to hit each other the same amount in the same timeframe. Now for the math.

A rose petal is approximately 0.35 cm wide (no joke, I actually went out and bought a rose just to measure it for this purpose), and, judging from her fight against that horde of Beowolves, a cut right down the middle that tears through several layers can make up to 120 petals, meaning each good slice is good for about four layers of rose petals, putting the amount of blood transformed at around one and a half centimeters all the way through. To be fair, Ruby is probably strong enough to completely cut through Carnage with every swing, even while he's firmed up. Still, measuring Carnage's length and volume in cube form by approximating it in human form, we can determine that the amount of slices needed to completely transform Carnage into rose petals and win the match (assuming each slice goes all the way through) is 158. A rather high number, but certainly not an unreachable one for as fast a fighter as Ruby. Now for putting Carnage's strength against Ruby's Aura.

Carnage has strength equal and even superior to both Spiderman and Venom together, as shown multiple times during their battles. Spiderman's greatest feat of force is the time he acted as the landing gear for an airplane (holy crap!). When everything is added together, the total weight that he would have been supporting would equal nearly 58 Tons. While we don't know the acceleration and deceleration forces of the landing of said plane, basic physics tell us that to both continue to move it and force it to halt would require at least as much force as its total weight (though likely far more). So let's lowball this to about 58 tons of force. While we don't have many good force feats for Venom, we know that, at the very least, he's capable of lifting a 200 ton carnival ride (actually, the ride could have weighed as much as 340 tons, but I digress), and that was when he was heavily weakened. Comparing Spiderman's giant metal mechanism lifting feat (130 tons), which he performed when incredibly stressed and with an insane amount of effort, makes Venom AT LEAST 1.54 times as strong as Spidey, meaning he could probably hit with at least 89 tons of force. Combining the two, we see Carnage's strength ends up at 147 tons of force. All that's left, then, is to find Ruby's Aura's limit.

Unfortunately, we don't get a lot to go off of. There's plenty of times where her Aura survived an impressive blow, but not many times where it breaks. One time her Aura broke after a 400 foot fall, but she's way improved it since then, so we can't count that. In fact, the only real fight we've seen where modern Ruby loses her Aura is against Tyrian. This isn't 100% fair, since he clearly had some sort of Aura-draining ability, but given his fight against Qrow immediately after, it can't have been able to drain Aura by an insane margin. So let's just highball this and include the hits she blocked with her scythe and double the total number at the end to more than make up for any kind of Aura-draining that might've been going on. Doing this estimates she can take about 20 hits from a non-draining Tyrian before losing her Aura. Now, Tyrian nearly matched Qrow in strength, and Qrow cratered a sidewalk before in a drunken duel against Winter. Given the size of the crater and the shearing strength of concrete, this feat would take a minimum of 309 tons of force. So, we multiply that by 20 (even though Qrow proved he was stronger than Tyrian multiple times during the fight), and this puts Ruby's Aura's maximum limit at around 6190 tons of force – which makes sense when scaled to other characters. Yang took two hits from a robot in Volume 2, and, in the process, smashed through four giant pillars that would each take 1400 tons of force to break, and her Aura was nearly depleted. Ruby's Aura wasn't anywhere near as high as Yang's at the time, but given her training since, it's likely increased a fair bit. So, nowadays, it should be around or under this level.

So, plugging in the numbers and tripling Carnage's required hits to WAY overcompensate for Ruby's possibly superior speed through timeline scaling and the possibility of Carnage losing strength as the battle went on by way of losing blood, even though drops of Cletus's blood could still make tendrils that pierce metal and he's never shown strength loss through blood loss, what do we get?

Ruby requires 154 blows to kill Carnage… and Carnage requires 128 blows to kill Ruby.

And that's really what does it.

Ruby may have an agility advantage, but Carnage is just as fast as she is, definitely stronger, and has way more options on how, where, and when to hit her. The only real way Ruby has of pulling off those 154 cuts is to completely slice through Carnage, which isn't something he's going to let happen too often once he finds out Ruby can actually kill him. Meanwhile, Carnage had dozens of different ways to hit Ruby, each with around the same strength level. And recall that the 128 blows was a really overestimated number.

Long story short, Carnage matched Ruby in every way that mattered and surpassed her everywhere else. The two could rain blows on each other until one fell, but Ruby's Aura would give out well before the Carnage symbiote did, and Carnage was able to take advantage of that. Cletus may be a psychotic killer, but even he has a brain.

And now, he has Ruby's as well.

 **The winner is Carnage.**

 **…**

 _Next time, on Death Battle…_

A blond jester spins herself around with her massive hammer and takes out a horde of mercenaries.

VS.

A blond cheerleader spins herself around with her powerful chainsaw and takes out a horde of zombies.

(Harley Quinn vs. Juliet Starling)

 **A/N: As always, questions and suggestions are welcome! thanks to everyone who leaves reviews and who has followed and favorited this story! Hopefully, you'll continue to enjoy it! Here's to a successful Season 2!**


	14. Harley Quinn vs Juliet Starling

**A/N: I have some big news I'll share later on when all the plans are finalized and I have a hold on exactly what's happening. The only reason I'm telling you this now is to explain why I'm not referencing or talking about ScrewAttack's 100** **th** **Episode of Mario vs. Sonic in comparison to my own – it's mostly to avoid spoilers for anybody who hasn't read my fight and wishes to wait for said news. Yes, the news has to do with that. Read it if you want – or wait. I think you'll find the wait worth it. Oh, uh the Season 1 Statistics has spoilers for my Mario vs. Sonic thing, too. So be warned.**

 **Oh, and a big shout-out to DB-20, who suggested this fight to me! It ended up being pretty awesome. Another shout-out to Shadowjab17, who mentioned me on his profile! Geez, man, I'm blushing. Don't be afraid to suggest more stuff, everyone! Also, review. Please. Rants. Praise. Whatever. Thanks!**

 _Episode 12: Harley Quinn (DC Comics) vs. Juliet Starling (Lollipop Chainsaw)_

When it comes time to face up against legions of powerful foes, the person you want most at your side is a trusted friend and skilled warrior. Or a blonde psychedelic ditz with weapons way too powerful and skills way too unmatched for her own good who also happens to have extensive experience in fighting off hordes of enemies. And is way too attached to her boyfriend. Way too attached.

Harley Quinn, the loyal, then disloyal, then loyal, then disloyal sidekick of the Joker, and Juliet Starling, the ultimate zombie killer of San Romero.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.

 **Harley Quinn:**

In the slums of Gotham City, criminals run wild. Despite an insanely active police force and the constant efforts of a certain caped crusader known as Batman, crime is rampant, and crime bosses are even more so. Somehow. In such a place, you'd think a blond ex-physiatrist with a giant hammer wouldn't be that much of a threat. And yet Harley Quinn, the Joker's second-in-command and constant companion, has proven herself to be one of the greatest threats to the Batman in all of comics.

 _Boxy Bennett holds a gun up, pointing at Harley and Veronica, both of whom instantly raise their hands. He sneers. "Any last words?"_

" _Just one," Harley replies. "BABIES!"_

 _Instantly, her two pet hyenas burst through the wall and begin mauling Boxy. Harley waves her hand and instructs them. "Play nice with your new chew toy, okay?"_

Well, until she wasn't, and became a superhero, and then an anti-hero, and then a god – you know what, we'll get to that. But before she was Mistah J's loyal follower, she was Harleen Quinzel, a teenage girl with a penchant for lollipops and overanalyzing the minds of her peers.

Young Harleen's incredibly gifted mind was obvious from the start. She was capable of dissecting the inner thoughts of the most complicated of adults when she was only nine years old, and her talent grew rapidly from there. Gaining perfect grades throughout her school life and studying the minds of murderers (and her own psychopathic family) on the side, the future was bright for this young girl. And yet, she did have one problem – one wish, if you will. Her incredible intellect made life boring and made it difficult for anyone to talk to her. She went friendless throughout most of her school life, and would often act like a teenage ditz just to get some more social activity and some friends. This only led to her being even more estranged, as people then saw her as a sort of a mad scientist – someone who was so bright they'd gone insane. Still, she did graduate from Gotham University at the top of her class and landed a job as a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum. Studying and fixing the minds of the most insane of criminals became her passion, her life's work – until she met the Joker.

As being legally considered the most insane and dangerous man on the planet, Harleen was more than happy to receive his case and get a chance to pick his brain and attempt to cure him. But when it came to the Joker, even a mind as bright as hers was in over its head. For every step she thought she had made, the Joker had made two more in the path to bring her to insanity. He was caring, understanding, but, most of all, interested. He knew who she was, and more importantly, why she was. He understood her airhead act and penchant for overanalyzing people, and not only understood, but encouraged it. As she grew to know less about the real him, he grew to know more about the real her. To be fair, she had made progress, and even found out the true reality of who the Joker was before it was too late. In a research paper, she stated that while the Joker seemed insane, he meticulously researched and planned ahead every move he made. He wasn't a poor case study of a madman – he was a secret genius who should be declared sane and executed as soon as possible. But she really should have paid more attention to her own words. Before she knew it, Harleen had fallen completely and totally in love with the Joker, and he had her wrapped around his finger. So she helped him escape and, after a dip in the same chemicals that had turn him into the Joker, she stuck by his side as his number-one sidekick and partner in a horribly abusive relationship that people who sell Joker and Harley T-Shirts clearly aren't aware of. From that day on, she was no longer Harleen Quinzel. She became…Harley Quinn. Get it? Like a harlequin, a brightly-colored servant of the theater? No? Oh well.

Over her years in Gotham's crime syndicate (no, not the evil superhero one), Harley has more than proven her worth as one of Batman's toughest adversaries. Also, she possesses a strange…knowledge of the medium. She doesn't really break the fourth wall, per say, but even after the DC Universe rebooted for the fourth time, she still remembers and refers to her adventures from the first incarnation. And she somehow has kept all powers granted to her throughout all of them! Why? How? Nobody knows. That's also the answer to the question of how she has access to hammerspace. For those of you unaware of the term, this means that she can store way more stuff than she can physically hold on her person and bring any of it out at any time. This has made her arsenal quite large over time, and she can pull things from it at any point. These include baseball bats, chainsaws, throwing stars, kunai, several kinds of bombs and explosives, her two pet hyenas, deadly gases and poisons (including the almost-always lethal Joker Venom, which is basically the world's deadliest laughing gas), handguns, shotguns, a sniper rifle, a pop gun that can pierce steel, an extend-o boxing glove that can pierce steel, and even a plant that heals her wounds and restores her stamina when she sniffs it! Oh, and plenty of hammers. Wooden hammers, iron hammers, spiked hammers, even a diamond hammer and a hammer that's actually a rocket launcher! Her go-to weapon, though, is the classic Harleen Hammer. This beauty is colored red and black, just like her hair (well, sometimes, she also goes pink and blue and white and even green once, or sometimes just right back to the original blonde), made completely out of carbon-based steel, and it's nearly as tall as she is! Measuring directly from her, this monstrosity would weigh 7.7 Tons! And she wields it like a toothpick! Oh, yeah, her exposure to superhuman chemicals and serums from both the Joker and Poison Ivy has granted her superhuman strength, speed, durability, stamina, senses, reactions, resistance to cutting, the ability to breathe underwater and in space, immunity to all poisons and toxins (including the Joker Venom and Scarecrow's Fear Toxin), and a healing factor that can repair bullet wounds in seconds. Anyway, she's used said hammer to smash through iron bars, tear massive holes in steel walls and spaceships, knock out a fully-armored Batman with one blow, and catch her fair share of victims by surprise by chucking the thing at them, and then having it return to her hand just like Captain America's shield! She's even thrown the thing high into the sky and knocked out an entire band of mercenaries before catching it! Assuming a generously short time frame of twenty-five seconds, throwing it that high would have taken over 14 Tons of Force! Plus, it's basically indestructible, somehow surviving blows from the likes of General Zod and Black Adam, and can deflect projectiles – even laser fire!

And she uses all of these pretty darn well when it comes to fighting. She's knowledgeable in several martial arts, including taekwondo, karate, capoeira, kung fu, wing chun, and a fair amount of others. However, she rarely uses any of these in combat unless it's in conjunction with her favorite martial art – the one she invented specifically for her! This specialty fighting style uses constant acrobatics and gymnastic moves along with flips, kicks, and precise hand movements to make herself unpredictable, fast, and devastatingly effective. She's skilled enough to defeat and humiliate the likes of Deadshot, Catwoman, Nightwing, and even Batman himself in hand-to-hand combat! And, if you don't recall, Batman's studied every martial art in the world! He and Harley have duked it out in hand-to-hand three times – and every time, Harley's beaten him. And then there's the time she fought Superman. In preparation for the match, Superman had been training under a red sun for a day and a half, robbing him of his powers, and then he and Harley faced off in the ring. Now, while Superman didn't have superpowers, he still held his same level of fighting skill. And remember that he's been trained in multiple fighting styles and pressure point combat – he's even bested the likes of Deathstroke in a match based on pure martial arts and techniques. _And Harley beat him to a bloody pulp_. Her movements are so unpredictable, even Cassandra Cain, whose literal power is the ability to predict her opponents via body movements, can't understand anything about what she's going to do. She's one of only a few people on the planet that Deadshot (whose entire claim to fame is that he never misses) can't hit. Even from a point-blank range, she still manages to trick him into taking the wrong shot!

Her physical abilities are pretty crazy, too. She can jump twenty-five feet into the air, perform a triple flip from a standstill, and support all the weight of her body (around 140 lb) on a single finger. She's strong enough to throw people through concrete walls, tough enough to survive atmospheric reentry on multiple occasions, and fast enough to speed-blitz even the fastest of the bat-family and pretty much everyone in the Gotham Crime Syndicate. Her speed may be her best quality, in fact – in combat, she's been able to keep up with and defeat many foes who can move around Mach 3-5, including Cheetah and, on one occasion, Vixen. In a battle against Catwoman (whom she one-shotted and almost killed), she was able to leave six afterimages in her wake. To do so would mean that, at this point of the fight, she was moving at around 4,500 MPH! It should be noted that she can't really _run_ at that speed, but she can certainly fight that fast. I mean, she's dodged hundred of bullets at once and a point-blank round from a high-velocity sniper rifle. All this meant that she was more than worthy of being the Joker's greatest helper. Until he kicked her out of his life for no real reason (to be fair, he has tried to kill her on multiple occasions) and she started on her own…adventures. She's teamed up with many superheroes and had some crazy experiences. Like when she became Power Girl's sidekick and went to an alternate dimension with a guy named Manos who wielded infinity rings (real subtle, DC). During some smack talk, she managed to steal every one of the rings right off of his fingers without him noticing, murdered him, and got the two of them back to their reality, where she promptly survived the explosion of a shopping mall. She's fought off a zombie invasion near-singlehandedly, infiltrated Arkham Asylum on several occasions, and defeated dozens of members of the League of Assassins by herself! She's punched a guy wearing full body armor's head clean off, dazed the alien god Barda by throwing a goblet at her, and matched the strength of Killer Croc, who can rip a 27 Ton bank vault door off its hinges with ease!

It's unfortunate, then, that her exposure to those chemicals and the huge amount of time spent around crazy people has made her…kind of insane. I mean, she tortured a guy for days on end in some pretty horrific ways just for dressing up like the Joker, and hallucinated herself saving the life of Santa Claus from inside his brain just to get her mind to recover from the fact that a mall Santa was going to be late for work. Still, she is one of the brightest minds to ever come out of Gotham University, and has been labeled a genius by multiple members of the Justice League. She's used her quick thinking, ability to use her surroundings, and vast knowledge of psychology in order to fight and sometimes defeat foes she should have no business fighting, including the likes of Black Adam, General Zod, Power Girl, and Zorcrom, all fighters around Superman's level. She could never best any of them in physical combat, so she relied on her wits and exploited their inner psyches, finding weaknesses and using her speed, unpredictability, and pain tolerance to reach said weaknesses before dying. She was nearly able to completely convert Zorcrom, one of the most powerful and evil beings in the underworld, to the side of good with a single conversation. Before, you know, he ran out of food and went on a food-seeking rampage. Even then, she was still able to form a strategy to kill him that ended up succeeding. With her mind, she's a surprisingly effective leader, and at different points has led the Quintets, Sirens, Rouge Gallery, Suicide Squad, and the Secret Six. There have even been a few times she joined the Justice League!

But we're nowhere near done listing off her feats. She's beaten Killer Croc, the Joker, Black Mask, Two-Face, Kitana, and Poison Ivy, and even defeated Robin, Batgirl and Nightwing – and all three at the same time. She's killed a group of kidnappers while tied to a chair, rode Man-Bat's body across the city like surfboard after effortlessly snapping his neck, escaped hell itself, defeated the majority of the Suicide Squad when they went insane, killed a Black Lantern (think zombie super saiyan), murdered up a bunch of zombie superheroes, laughed off the electric chair, and killed an entire room of mercenaries with nothing but a deck of playing cards. She's strong enough to hold back the bite force of a lion, knock a 2001 lb monster out of a boxing ring with one punch, throw the Joker fifty feet into the air, pick up a two-ton car with one hand, and snap a metal barbell – and drive one end of through her victim's throat! Geez! She's survived having open-body surgery while awake, being flattened like a pancake, a point-blank laser-eye blast from Black Manta, riding a rocket into the horizon where it crashed and exploded, being run over by a car while on top of one of the coldest mountains on earth, wandering the desert for days without food, water, or rest, and being inside a crashing spaceship. This ship in particular was meant to go into outer space, but its thrusters had somehow become reversed and it was thus sent flying, full force, into the ground over twenty miles below. True, the total impact was lessened by it crashing into some ice and then the ocean, and it had lost momentum through spinning, but even accounting for both of those things and only taking into account the space Harley occupied still puts the minimum explosive force she would have gone through at around 180 Tons of TNT. And she was just knocked out for a few minutes! And you'd do well to remember her resistance to cutting weapons. It's not an outright immunity, and very sharp or dangerous objects will definitely hurt her, but most swords, axes, and other things that aren't bullets just send her backwards instead, as if she was hit by a blunt blow.

One time, Joker restrained her in a straightjacket and tied her to a hospital bed in order to throw her into a giant pit of ultimate death. So, what did she do? On the very edge up the pit, she reached up with her legs, grabbed the Joker's neck, and completely reversed the two's positions with one move. And then she just shattered the straightjacket and restrainers with a flex of her chest! She's beheaded a fifty-foot shark, kicked a guy's gun out of his hand so perfectly it shot him in the forehead, helped defeat the entire Chinese military, and bested the champion of the Scrubb, a powerful and tyrannical alien race, which earned her fame around the galaxy as the Champion of the Universe. This eventually led to her being recruited into the Female Furies, the elite warriors of Apokolips. In the process, she killed all of Darkseid's most powerful parademons in a row, and was officially declared a god.

And yet the feat she is most proud of is finally getting out of the Joker's shadow…for now. She now runs an apartment building filled with people who, like her, just don't fit in with the rest of the world. She spends her days taking on the most fun mercenary jobs she can find and protecting her own little corner of reality from threats, finally managing to become a functioning member of society once more. She even became friends with Batman, the man she once swore to kill. Though she still can't tell that he and Bruce Wayne are the same person. Even after spending all day with Bruce Wayne AFTER spending all day with Batman, and then kissing the both of them within the span of ten minutes, she still didn't figure it out.

Still, not many supervillains have claimed multiple smooches from the caped crusader of his own free will.

Not bad for the sidekick of a crazy killer clown.

 _As she climbs up a giant waving sign in her classic jester outfit, Harley Quinn cries out. "I tried to be good! I really did!" She reaches the top of the sign and stands up. "But if that's not good enough, then fine!" She pulls out a grenade and pulls off the cap with her teeth. As she's about to throw it, she shouts once more._

" _Let's get back to the basics!"  
_

 _She throws the grenade down into the street._

 **Harley Quinn:**

Name: Harleen Quinzel

Species: Human

Height: 5'7"/170 cm

Weight: 140 lb/64 kg

Age: 25+

Occupation: Landlord, Mercenary

Favorite Food: Cheeseburger Sandwiched Between Two Donuts and Deep-Fried in Batter

Snuffs Scarecrow's Fear Toxin for kicks

Skin is actually white – she puts on makeup to look like a normal human

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Reactions

Superhuman Senses

Superhuman Longevity

Immunity to any and all toxins and poisons

Can breathe without oxygen

Healing Factor

Hammerspace

Fourth Wall Awareness

Resistance to Cutting Weapons

 **Arsenal:**

Chainsaws

Baseball Bats

Pop Gun

Extend-O Boxing Glove

Rifles

Machine Guns

Handguns

Shotguns

Rocket Launchers

Healing Herbs

Healing Plant

Throwing Stars

Kunai

Pie Bombs

Timed Bombs

Normal Bombs

Cannons

Joker Venom

Acid

Other Toxic Gases

Hammers

Diamond Hammer

Iron Spiked Hammer

Rocket Hammer

Harleen Hammer

 **Feats:**

Can support the entire weight of her body on a single finger

Commonly leaves three to four afterimages in her wake

Knocked out Batman cold with just one swing from her hammer

Effortlessly wields Harleen Hammer, threw it up into the air for twenty-five seconds

Dazed the alien god Big Barda

Became a New God of Apokolips

Defeated Joker multiple times

Defeated Batman

Defeated Deadshot

Defeated and nearly killed Killer Croc

Defeated and nearly killed Black Mask

One-shotted and nearly killed Catwoman

Defeated Cassandra Cain

Defeated Poison Ivy

Defeated Two-Face

Defeated the Penguin

Defeated Kitana

Defeated most of the Suicide Squad at once

Rode Man-Bat through the air after breaking his neck  
Dodged point-blank bullets multiple times

Shot four guys in less than one second

Tossed Joker fifty feet through the air

Dodged high-velocity shotgun fire

Can scale twenty-five feet with one jump

Even Batman said he would lose a one-on-one street fight against her

Straight-up knocked the head off of a guy wearing full body armor

Healing factor lets her heal from an open bullet wound in just a couple of seconds

Had open surgery while fully awake and didn't care

Laughed off the electric chair

Beheaded a fifty-foot shark

Survived being flattened like a pancake w/o healing factor

Shot off into the horizon on top of a rocket, survived the crash

Killed a group of kidnappers while tied to a chair

Left six afterimages while fighting Catwoman

Killed a room full of mercenaries with nothing but a deck of playing cards

Hammer can send back projectiles, even laser fire

Also, she reacted to laser fire

Survived the frostbitten realm of the top of a mountain, -300 degrees Fahrenheit

Was slammed into by a car, got up more surprised than anything else

Knocked a 2001 lb monster out of a boxing ring with one punch

Defeated Robin, Batwoman, and Nightwing all at the same time

Once moved faster than the eye could track

Killed a Black Lantern

Escaped hell

Led the Quintettes, Sirens, and Suicide Squad

Defeated Black Adam, General Zod through strategy

Matched Killer Croc's strength

Survived atmospheric reentry multiple times

Survived the explosion of a shopping mall

Survived a crashing spaceship

Killed a bunch of zombie superhero clones

Fought off the chinese army w/ Suicide Squad

Stole infinity rings off of Manos' fingers without him realizing it

Survived a point-blank blast from Black Manta

Took out dozens of members of the League of Assassins

Easily smashes people through walls

Is one of the few people that Deadshot can't land a hit on

Once kicked a guy in the head so perfectly that she forced him to shoot himself in the head

Has magic burps that can knock people out

Survived hits from the likes of Zod, Black Adam, and Zorcrom

Knocked out a depowered Superman with a single punch

Defeated the champion of the Scrubb

Defeated Darkseid's most dangerous parademons in gladiatorial combat

 **Weaknesses:**

Insane

Easily distracted

Way too overconfident

Acts like a teenager

Stamina has a limit

Defeated multiple times

Has required help with most impressive feats

 **…**

 **Juliet Starling:**

Take a look around you. You are in but one room of hundreds, likely thousands, in your city. And that city is but one of thousands across the world. And that world is but one of three. Earth, the Land Beyond Words, and the Rotten World are three separate dimensions in harmony with each other – one representing life, one representing rot, and one representing betweeness. And yet sometimes, the barrier between these dimensions becomes a little thin, and the monsters and mayhem of the Rotten World are more than happy to invade our part of reality. When that happens, we need someone to step in. Someone who can protect our world. Someone who can save our people. Someone who can handle these monsters and kill all of them in the cheeriest, most bloody way possible. And that's where the blonde cheerleader known as Juliet Starling comes in.

 _While in the midst of shooting down a massive group of exploding zombies, Juliet poses a question to her boyfriend, Nick. "What if you flew up in a helicopter over a horde of zombies and you saw they were standing in the shape of a smiley face emoticon?! OH MY GOD! I WOULD LOVE THAT!"_

 _Nick blinks once and replies "Are you sure you haven't eaten a space cake?"  
_  
Born as the latest member of a long line of monster hunters, Juliet's destiny was determined for her ever since she was six months old – due to the fact that she killed her first zombie at that age with a sharpened rattle. Talk about setting the bar high! By her eighteenth birthday, she'd fought and killed dozens of supernatural foes – vampires, sasquatches, leprechauns, and frakenberries (not the cereal). So, when the zombie apocalypse turned out to be nigh and started at her school, she wasn't just prepared - she was excited. As she fought and killed zombie after zombie, saving person after person, she put to good work every skill that had been shoved into her brain over the years. And, having trained her whole life under the legendary sensei Morikama (a guy who could slice up zombies faster than the eye could track with a fish), those are a lot of skills. She knows a bunch of different fighting styles and martial arts, including taekwondo, kickboxing, karate, muay thai, and…ballet, pole dancing, wrestling, and a huge amount of gymnastics. She combines aspects of all of these styles into her own personalized martial art, which is just as effective in dealing with groups as it is when it comes to dealing with superpowered individuals. Which is to say, very, very, very effective. But she doesn't just rely on pure skill. Being a descendant of the Starlings, Juliet is able to access and perform feats of magic, increasing her strength, speed, stamina, and durability to superhuman levels and giving her some…odd powers. She can decapitate an armored zombie with just a punch, dodge huge streams of gunfire from multiple sources with pure acrobatics, and survive giant explosions with relative ease. Her fighting style alone not only made her captain of her cheerleading squad (a feat any high-schooler knows is a million times more impressive than anything on this list), but also allows her to dodge dozens of zombie blows at once and handle fighters with skill levels that are supposedly well above her own. Too bad that she can be kind of an airhead at times and is easily distracted. But when you've got the weapons she does, you can afford to get a little distracted.

Juliet's trademark weapon is her trusty Bedazzled Chainsaw, a magical and incredibly deadly chainsaw that can cut through zombies, trees, energy barriers, and metal doors like butter. It also comes with plenty of perks, like never having to refuel, being indestructible, creating LED lights and sparkles with every successful hit, and setting itself on fire or charging up electrically. It's also been personally modified by Juliet to also serve as a cell phone, a cassette player, and a notebook. Don't ask me how. But more impressive still, it can activate its own magic in order to allow Juliet to perform the Chainsaw Dash, which allows her to move fast enough to form a mach cone around her body! Given its size and diameter, her speed in this form should be reaching around Mach 1.7, and she can keep this form for several minutes with the right fuel supply. As if that all weren't enough, it transforms into a frickin' grenade launcher! This form, the Chainsaw Blaster, can hold up to three dozen rounds at once, can shoot targets over 700 feet away with perfect accuracy, and each of those grenades are powerful enough to pulverize rocks and helicopters far larger than Juliet so thoroughly, the dust created is invisible to the human eye! To do this would require _at least_ 2.5 Tons of TNT, and likely far more. And Juliet can use it rapid-fire to hit zombies right on the nose hundreds of feet away!

When she doesn't feel like using her chainsaw (which is never), she equips her Pom-Poms, two golden balls of streamers that magically appear in her hands out of nowhere and increase her strength by some distance. With these things on, she can easily shove around a 1500 lb street ladder, hit a 4200 lb car several feet into the air, and completely decimate speakers larger than herself, again reaching the point of dissolving them so thoroughly, you can't physically see the dust left over! With just a punch! Her strength even without the Pom-Poms is impressive enough – she can bend metal, create small shockwaves, throw off nine zombies at once (which would have a combined weight of around 1600 lb) without any form of effort, and can even knock over a 700 lb wooden structure with a single finger. Also, she outmatched the biting force of a giant zombie, which, when scaled to human biting forces, could be over 4,500 PSI - that's greater than the biting force of a crocodile, a great white shark, and even a T-Rex! _And she didn't even struggle_!

Her arsenal is rounded off with another…unusual weapon. So, when she arrived at school and found the place infested with zombies thanks to this emo kid named Swan who's clearly a little too obsessed with The Dark Knight's Joker, her first real effort (after knocking over a 25,000 lb school bus, surviving several sprays of acid to the face, and killing nearly a hundred zombies) was to save her boyfriend, Nick Carlyle, from a horrible zombie fate. As it turned out, though, he ended up saving her life instead – at the cost of his own. In protecting her from a surprise zombie strike, he was bitten in the arm, guaranteeing a zombie transformation. Or not. In order to save him, Juliet beheaded him with her chainsaw and kept his head alive with magic. She would then continue on her zombie-slaying adventure with Nick constantly hanging off the back of her skirt, doling out advice, wisecracks, and complaints whenever she does and doesn't want them.

 _As they run up some stairs, Juliet asks Nick something. "Nick, what's your favorite color?"_

 _Nick's amputated head shakes around as she jumps up the steps. "Huh? Blue! Er, no, green!"  
_

 _Juliet giggles. "Oh, I love learning new things about you!"  
_

" _Agh! I f**ked up! It's yellow!"_

But conversation is hardly all that Nick is good for. Being a magic head has a fair amount of benefits, including this ability to control headless zombies for a short time, or, more helpful, the ability to produce money when shaken. Every once in a while, his head might even spawn a lollipop, which Juliet can eat in order to somehow heal her wounds and restore half her health. He's also virtually indestructible, and so Juliet can utilize him as some sort of homing soccer ball, a flail, or a shotgun blast. And, thanks to their magical connection, he always ends up right back in her hand. So, yes, she uses her boyfriend's decapitated head as a weapon. That's not creepy at all.

So, equipped with a magic chainsaw, strength-enhancing Pom-Poms, a decapitated head, and a fighting style unlike any other, she went on a grand journey to stop the zombie invasion and kill the five Dark Purveyors (basically super zombies from the Rotten World) and had some…weird adventures. Like when she went up against Josey, a zombie who could make video games reality. After playing through zombified versions of several arcade games, Juliet went up to Josey's disco dance floor and shot him up – right up until he turned the whole place into a UFO and she had to fight him on top of an alien spaceship careening through the sky. Oh, and she killed Pac-Man. You know, the guy who shrugged off a giant building falling on him and killed Spooky, one of the most powerful beings in the supernatural world?

When she battled Zed, a punk rock zombie who can move at supersonic speeds (because why not), she was able to _catch_ and smash _cars_ thrown at her at and easily dodge literal words. Yes, this zombie can actually transform his words into a physical attack. This means that they must move at the speed of sound – and she can dodge dozens at once! Even more impressive, she threw a lollipop she was sucking on into the air at the start of the battle, and made it through all of his phases and killed him three times over before the thing fell back down and she caught it! And all of this, mind you, was after shrugging off a hit that literally sent her flying _miles away_.

She's strong enough to cut through four lead pipes at once, fast enough to dodge a point-blank bullet, tough enough to easily take an explosion that could destroy a four-story house, and skilled enough to cut a zombie's head off in such a way as to send it flying through the air and perfectly landing through a basketball hoop – _fifty times in a row_! Her senses have been superfied, making it virtually impossible for anything to sneak up on her (unless it's PIS so Nick can become a talking head), she can perform a fifty foot vertical jump (over 25x greater than the average person), and can apparently explode multiple zombies simply by jumping on their heads in quick succession. Plus, when using her chainsaw, she can somehow hover in the air for a full second. And if all that's not enough, if she gets enough successful hits in, she can activate her Star Soul Power, which turns her rainbow-colored, lasts around 20 seconds, and grants increased strength, superior weapons, and complete invulnerability! And it's not like she ever really needs it, either. She's killed plenty of things without it.

Like giant zombies, cow zombies, radioactive zombies, flying zombies, hallucinated zombies, explosive zombies, fiery zombies, electric zombies, space zombies, fictional zombies, giant fire-breathing chicken zombies, and the list goes on. You name a zombie, and chances are good that she can take it down with little effort. Every once in a while, she even shows that she can kill things that aren't zombies, like the time she fought a giant elephant mech suit and tore it to pieces. Her battles against the Dark Purveyors have shown off her skills pretty darn well. Like when she fought Vikke, a viking zombie with an electric drum set that's literally electric, on top of his Viking ship as it sailed through the night sky. After taking dozens of lightning bolts to the head, and, through pattern recognition, dodging dozens more, she did manage to take him down, and his ship with him. And she survived the crash with no real injuries whatsoever!

In fact, her ability to take a hit and keep on going like nothing happened is perhaps her strongest trait. When she found out that her school birthday cake had been stuffed with dynamite, and a bunch of zombies also stuffed with dynamite broke in, she jumped through the window to escape the explosion. However, the explosion went off instantly after she left the window, and, given her size and measuring the distance between her and the dynamite, she should have felt the full force of the explosion regardless. That means she experienced enough explosive force to obliterate several houses – _and didn't notice_. She's constantly taking hits that send her flying miles away, enduring powerful electric shocks, acid sprays, fire, and many other normally fatal things without flinching, and can eat several bullets, fall over, and get right back up unfazed. She's not bulletproof, certainly, but her training has made her able to charge through even the toughest of situations while ignoring any pain she might be feeling. Probably. Hey, you come up with a better explanation! Anyway, she fell for eight straight seconds into a hole, landed on her feet, and acted like nothing happened. Given her size, she'd be falling at the end of it all at speeds of over 175 MPH, and would land with nearly 8 Tons of Force. And she didn't even feel it! She's been rammed by a bus, thrown through walls, and powered through a minefield! And remember that UFO? After defeating and murdering Josey, the entire ship was hit with a powerful series of explosions that cut it in half! Note that, while many claim Juliet was the one who cut it, she clearly wasn't. She has no other feat supporting such an outlier, and her dad had snuck in with her with plenty of explosives – and the spaceship-cutting explosion happened right after he left. So, yeah, it's pretty clear that he set up charges to go off. Still, she was right above the explosion when it happened, and was fine. That's really impressive, since, estimating its size and assuming an average steel shearing strength of around 64,000 PSI, the amount of explosive force necessary to rend it in half would be around 475 Tons of TNT! And after taking this point-blank, she jumped off the ship and survived atmospheric reentry and the trip to the ground! AND LAUGHED!

And, while fighting Mariska, a psychedelic hippie zombie, she was purposefully given a constant drug-induced high. Even while experiencing simultaneous sensory overload and sensory deprivation, a distorted sense of time, confusion, constant anxiety, impaired judgement, and consistent _hallucinations_ , she was able to murder no less than six hundred zombies and kill Mariska – FOURTEEN TIMES. Holy crap.

She'd be perfect – if only she wasn't easily distracted, overexuberant, and kind of a ditz. It's not that she's a bad strategist, in fact, she's actually pretty decent when she puts her mind to it – but rarely does she put her mind to it. This even led to her accidentally opening up a door to the Rotten World and letting loose Killabilly, who's basically Satan if Satan was grotesquely fat, looked like Elvis Presley, and was the size of a skyscraper. Don't worry, though – she killed him. In the process, she caught more cars thrown at inhuman speeds and built a bridge out of them twice, dodged 900 MPH laser beams with ease, and even took a few hits from said lasers – which were powerful enough to obliterate skyscrapers! And, after jumping into his skyscraper-sized body and exploding it, she just kinda…sat there, completely unhindered by the explosion. A skyscraper-sized explosion – and it doesn't faze her.

And, as a final feat, here's me reminding you that all of this – every single feat, ability, skill, and fight we just mentioned, happened in a single day. That's around 15 hours of straight fighting and doing all this crap – and she was still ready for Round 2. Who needs sleep when you have murder?

Ditz or not, there's no need to fear the zombie apocalypse when Juliet has our back. Unless we turn into zombies. Then she'll kill us, brutally and cheerfully.

 _A massive series of explosions tears open the floor of the hallway in front of Juliet, exposing several zombies underneath._

 _As they look into the hole, Nick asks "So, what are you going to do now, Juliet?"_

 _Juliet laughs. "Watch me, Nick!"_

 _She then leaps onto the nearest zombie's head, and then flips over to the next one, and continues to dance, flip, and stylize her way across every zombie's head, all the while shouting out cheerleader chants. When she reaches the other side of the pit unscathed, she stands still and raises her chainsaw up into the air._

" _You're already dead!"_

 _There's a brief second of silence before every zombie explodes into a hundred gory pieces._

 **Juliet Starling:**

Name: Juliet Starling

Species: Human

Height: 5'6"/168 cm

Weight: 165 lb/75 kg

Age: 18

Occupation: Student, Monster Hunter

Favorite Food: Strawberry Lollipops

GPA: 3.4

Fluent in Japanese

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Reactions

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Senses

Superhuman Pain Tolerance

Superhuman Stamina

Knowledgable in multiple fighting styles

~Karate

~Kickboxing

~Boxing  
~Taekwondo

~Muay Thai

~Judo

~Ballet

~Pole Dancing

~Wrestling

~Acrobatics/Gymnastics

 **Arsenal:**

Bedazzled Chainsaw

~Virtually unbreakable

~Can slice right through almost anything

~Infinite fuel

~Creates sparkles and LED lights

~Can set itself on fire

~Can make itself electric

~Can use Chainsaw Dash to move at superhuman speeds

~Transforms to become Chainsaw Blaster, fires 36 grenades

Pom-Poms

~Increases strength

Nick Carlyle's Head

~Money & Lollipop Generation

~Indestructibility

~Sentience

~Magical link to Juliet causes him to always end up back in her hands

Star Soul Power

 **Feats:**

Killed her first zombie at six months old with a sharpened rattle

Survived the explosion of a UFO

Survived atmospheric reentry

Flipped over the height of two school buses

Performed a fifty foot vertical jump

Dodged sprays of gunfire multiple times

Threw off nine zombies like it was nothing

Was in a bus which was then rammed into and blew up

Kicked open a metal door, breaking the metal lock

Cut through four metal sewage pipes at once

Doesn't flinch when sprayed in the face with radiation

Can dodge blows from several zombies at once

Dodged point-blank gunfire

Smashed through a metal garage door with a kick

Easily survives explosions from zombies that can level a one-story building

Can apparently blow people up by jumping on top of them

Cut heads off of zombies in such a way that they go flying and soar through a basketball hoop no matter where they actually are in the room

Survived being only around six feet from an explosion that could potentially destroy several houses, barely noticed

Took a eight-second fall on her feet like it was nothing

Destroy a giant robot elephant mech

Powered through a minefield

Can take multiple gunshots and only fall over

Was hit miles away into a junkyard, got up like nothing happened

Can almost effortlessly dodge literal physical words

Easily sliced a car in half as it was falling on her

Sliced and caught several others when thrown at her

Knocked over a 1500 lb street ladder with a kick

Defeated the five Dark Purveyors

Threw her lollipop into the air and killed Zed three times over before it fell back to the ground

Could recognize lightning-based attacks and dodge them

Survived several lightning bolts to the head and face

Knocked over a 700 lb wooden structure with one finger

Survived a crashing Viking ship from thousands of feet in the sky without a scratch

Killed 600+ zombies and Mariska while drugged out

Killed Pac-Man

Killed over 1300 zombies

Apparently killed vampires, sasquatches, leprechauns, frankenberries

Dodged a 900 MPH laser beam

Survived said beam, which could destroy skyscrapers

Outmatched the bite force of Killabilly

Survived being in the center of Killbilly's explosion, which was as big as a skyscraper

Destroyed several giant rocks with one shot of the Chainsaw Blaster

Using the Chainsaw Blaster, one-shotted a helicopter

 **Weaknesses:**

Extremely impatient

Always getting into fights

Kind of an airhead

Easily distracted

Easily tricked

Not used to fighting intelligent foes

More accustomed to group combat than 1v1

 **…**

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all. It's time for a Death Battle!

 **…**

"Come on, Nick, this is fun!" Juliet declared as she ran into the school theater. "I'd want to be a decapitated head if I was having this much fun!"

"Constantly getting motion sickness and being splattered with zombie guts is not fun," Nick grumbled. "The only good part of this whole thing is always being near your a-"

"Shh!" Juliet quieted him and ground to a halt. "I hear something!"

"Is it a voice telling you to leave me behind next time?"

"Nope!" shouted another voice from behind the theater's curtains. Suddenly the doors shut behind them and…melted together, then locked just for good measure. "It's an invitation! To the biggest party in your whole life! Your death!" The curtains parted, revealing a blonde woman with a stretched-out smile, pigtails dyed pink and blue at the ends, and chalk-colored skin, dressed in the clothes of a jester. She was sitting on top of a massive birthday cake with chainsaws painted all over it and mutilated zombie parts sticking out of all aspects – even the candles were nothing more than zombie fingers lit on fire.

"Ugh! That is easily the fourth-worst birthday cake I've ever been given in my life!" Juliet shouted. She stepped forward, chainsaw outstretched. "Wait, you're not a zombie!"

"Of course not!" Harley replied. "Who'd want to be zombie? You'd be all slow and grangly and smelly and couldn't say anything but 'brains!'"

"Actually," Nick said, unable to see anything that was happening, "all the zombies we've killed could totally talk. Hey…do you think they were sentient? I mean, they could talk, they had feelings they were in pain…did we just murder hundreds of living beings for no reason? Did we just murder our former friends for no reason?!"

"No, Nicky! Think like a monster hunter! It doesn't count if they're zombies!"

Harley tilted her head. "Would it matter if they were people? I mean, they were trying to kill you and all. And if they were your friends-"

"Of course it matters!" Nick shouted back. "Er, right? Juliet?"

Juliet seemed indecisive. "Well, I don't know. On one hand, they're our friends, and on the other hand, they're fun to kill. And zombies."

"Why was 'and zombies' an afterthought?!"

"So," Harley interrupted, "if we can get back to the part where I kill you, that'd be great."

"Hah!" Juliet shouted, and pointed the Bedazzled Chainsaw to the ceiling. "You wish!"

"Wait," Nick interjected. "You're a human, right? Why're you fighting against _us_ , not the zombies?"

"Dude," Harley huffed. "I'm a god now! I got responsibilities and stuff! And when Apokolips wants to help some dimension invade some other version of Earth, I gotta do that! I'm Harley Quinn! I have a reputation to uphold!"

"Yeah!" Juliet threw out. "A reputation of annoying me!"

There was a moment of silence.

"Wow, Juliet," Nick stated sarcastically. "You really got her. She'll wake up in a cold sweat thinking about that one."

"Don't be stupid, Nick!" Juliet replied, revving up the chainsaw as Harley pulled out a black and red hammer. "She can't wake up in a cold sweat if she's dead!"

"Have we not been fighting people who can do that for that past twelve hours?" Nick questioned.

Harley jumped at Juliet.

 **-FIGHT!-**

Juliet flipped out of the way.

Get used to hearing that line.

Harley swung her hammer around her in a spinning circle, zooming ahead at Juliet, who performed a cartwheel to the side and blackflipped over Harley's swinging form. Juliet instantly transformed her chainsaw into the Chainsaw Blaster, and unleashed four rounds at Harley in the blink of an eye. Harley stopped spinning, saw the grenades coming, and hit them all back with her hammer. Juliet leapt up to the ceiling and over the returning grenades, and then ran back to behind a row of fold-out chairs as the grenades exploded on the ground, harming nobody.

"Um," Nick questioned, "did she just throw those grenades back at us?"

"Oh!" Juliet shouted, startling Nick. "What if I had bounced them back at her? We could've had a game of Ping-Pong!"

"More like Hot Potato, considering," Nick corrected.

"Nick! I'm ashamed of you! How dare you even think I'd do that!"

"Huh?"

"Special delivery!" Harley shouted at the two as several banana crème pies flew through the air.

"Juliet! Run!"

"Don't be silly, Nick!" Juliet declared, "They're just delicious pies! Oh, do you think eating one will restore my health?!"

"WHY WOULD YOUR ENEMY BE THROWING PIES AT-"

The pies all landed and splattered against Juliet, coating her body in bananas, whipped cream, and filling. There were a few seconds of silence.

"Huh. I guess I was wrong," Nick confessed.

"What?" Harley shouted mournfully. "I was sure those were the explosive ones! Dang it, now I just wasted my whole secret pie stash for nothing!"

"This is delicious!" Juliet exclaimed, licking her lips. "Hey, Nick, want to help li-"

"TIME TO PAY!" Harley shouted. She pulled out a chaingun and began firing every bullet at Juliet. Juliet, however, just jumped up over the spray and mid-air-flipped forward, successfully dodging every bullet from the gun.

Harley grunted, a little annoyed. This girl just wouldn't get hit! Well, if a chaingun wasn't going to work, maybe getting in close would. "Hey, girlie! Catch this!" She pulled out a grenade and pulled the cap off with her teeth before throwing it up to the ceiling, curving in an arc towards Juliet. The grenade exploded near the top of the room, sending debris flying at Juliet. Juliet dove out of the way and closer towards Harley. She shot three blasts at Harley, who quickly swung her chaingun and hit them up towards the hole she'd already made, merely expanding it. Juliet switched to her chainsaw and swung at Harley, who easily dodged to the left. Juliet swung again, but she dodged once more. Again swung, and again dodged. Then Harley ducked underneath the chainsaw's blade to reach the girl she was fighting and popped up, hitting Juliet's chin hard with her head. Harley pressed this to her advantage, inflicting multiple strikes on various pressure points, eliciting a cry of pain from Juliet.

"Try not to get hit so often," the decapitated head attached to her skirt advised. Juliet huffed. "I AM TRYING!" Juliet switched out her chainsaw for her Pom-Poms and struck ahead at superhuman speeds, utilizing some Muay Thai to disable Harley's shoulder. But Harley blocked the attack with her wrist, crossed her other wrist over it, and used the momentum and pressure Juliet had put into the strike to flip her body over the arm, striking Juliet in the face with both feet and sending her flying back with a dislocated arm.

Juliet stood back up seemingly unhindered. "Aw, now that's going to be sore for, like, almost a week!" She grasped her own forearm and snapped it back into place.

"There's one problem with that logic," Harley giggled. She pulled a massive, circus-like cannon out of nowhere. "You're not going to live that long!" The cannon fired a massive cannonball, but Juliet brought out her chainsaw, ran at the cannonball, and cleaved it clean in half as it flew at her, which sent both halves flying in different directions.

Harley bit her lip, even further annoyed. "Okay, smartie," she announced, bringing out a chainsaw of her own. "Let's make this even more even, and eventually, even you can even even out when compared to how evenhanded my eventful-"

Juliet activated the Chainsaw Dash and reached Harley in an instant. "SHUT UP!"

Harley swung her chainsaw upwards, but the Bedazzled Chainsaw cleaved it in half instantly. Harley dove out of the way of the next strike, leaving her back on the ground and exposed. Juliet leapt into the air, chainsaw pointing down, intending to impale Harley through the stomach and end this. Harley only barely rolled out of the way in time, which caused Juliet to impale the rug-covered concrete below her. Harley pulled out her diamond hammer and slammed it upwards into Juliet's stomach, shoving her into the air with a gasp, and causing her to hit the ceiling and fall back down to the ground. She stumbled a bit while trying to get up and turned to face Harley – only to get a punch to the cheek from a spring-loaded boxing glove, which knocked her down once again. She rolled across the floor and backflipped back up to her feet…and saw a giant diamond hammer spinning through the air, heading right for her. Time seemed to slow down as she exhaled. She'd been getting the crap beaten out of her all night. She was done with this. Everything has a weak spot.

Eyes now open, she pulled back a punch and put forward her index and middle fingers. The hammer spun vertically –despite what she seemed to be seeing, it was really moving at supersonic speeds. But she could deal with that.

Because every diamond has one scratch.

She thrust her fingers forward right as the hammer came within a foot of her, striking a pressure point directly in the middle of the head of the hammer – and the whole thing shattered like glass.

Harley backed up and grinned. _Oh, this one is tougher than she looks. This might actually be fun._ She shot out the boxing glove again, but this time, Juliet caught it and yanked it forward, forcing Harley, much to her surprise, right at her. As Harley came with punching distance, Juliet switched to her Pom-Poms again, leapt a couple of feet into the air, and caught Harley by the neck with her legs. She hooked one arm under her foot and pulled it up while simultaneously pushing off with the other foot. This sent Harley spinning through the air with a bruised arm, and about to be face-planted into a concrete wall. But barely in time, she managed to steady herself. She caught the fall with open palms and used her gained momentum to flip over and land perfectly on her feet. She pulled out another hammer and turned to swing it at Juliet, who had used the Chainsaw Dash to get up close again. Juliet ducked under the first swing and threw a kick at Harley, which she avoided. Harley swung again – and Juliet caught bottom of the hammer with her open hand. She grasped it, and suddenly Harley wasn't able to move the thing at all.

"Looks like you've got some surprises left," Harley giggled out. The end of the hammer popped off. "SURPRISE!" A rocket fired out of the previously empty space, aimed right at Juliet's face – but Juliet switched to her Bedazzled Chainsaw and sliced it right in half.

Harley backed up a bit. "Not fair! That was my seventy-fourth favorite hammer!"

Nick blinked. "How many hammers do you-"

"ALL OF THEM!" Harley screamed, pulling a new metal hammer out of nowhere. In an instant she was behind Juliet and hit her square in the back, and then she was in front of her and smacked her in the stomach. Then behind her, and then in front, and so on, each time barraging Juliet with blow after blow.

"Oh, no!" Juliet shouted, slightly mortified but seemingly unaffected. "My daddy told me to be careful in high school to never get hammered! He's going to be so mad!"

Harley stopped hitting her. "Um, doesn't that hurt?!"

"Huh? Was it supposed to?"

There was yet another moment of silence.

"Juliet," Nick said, breaking it, "there are times I think you are overly compulsive and weird, and suspect you might be slightly psychopathic. I love you, but you should know that this is one of those times."

"Really, Nick?!" Juliet answered. "I LOVE YOU, TOO!"

"Did you seriously not listen to a wor-"

"And I'm ending this prematurely," Harley interrupted. She whipped out a bottle of radioactive spray and sprayed it around the air. Juliet coughed a bit, but was in no way dying.

"UGH!" Juliet shouted. "There goes my singing voice for the next two days! You are easily the most annoying not-zombie I've fought today!" She lifted up the Bedazzled Chainsaw and ran at a surprised Harley, getting in a solid swing.

Harley, for her part, was way faster than Juliet, and was quick to react. She hadn't expected the attack, but managed to scoot backwards anyway – but not quite quickly enough. The chainsaw tore through part of her jester attire and her clothes underneath, and nicked her skin. Luckily, her healing factor had it patched up real quick. But that didn't stop Harley's anger.

"YOU VANILLA- THAT WAS MY FAVORITE OUTFIT! AND MY THIRD-FAVORITE BLOUSE!" She pulled out a giant axe. "That's it. You need to die."

She rushed at Juliet and swung the axe, which Juliet quickly backflipped over. Juliet then ducked under the axe, cut through it with her chainsaw, and struck a nerve in Harley's exposed skin, sending her reeling in pain. Seething, Harley flipped into the air, spin-kicking Juliet's head – or she would have if Juliet hadn't jumped into the air, scissored Harley's leg with hers, and flipped the pigtailed god all the way through the air, slamming her on her back with enough force to smash the concrete floor. She again attempted the chainsaw impalement, but was struck across the face by the handle of the now-cut axe and feel to the ground next to Harley. The two jumped up at the same time and ran at each other. Juliet sliced through the air at Harley, but Harley kicked into Juliet's wrist, temporarily disabling it, and pulled out a handgun. "Take this, you blouse-ripper!"

Juliet inhaled in shock at having been bested when Harley pulled the trigger.

And then she sighed in relief when all that came out was a flag with the word "Bang!" on it. Juliet actually started to laugh.

"Huh?" Harley stepped up a bit. "I coulda shoulda woulda sworn this was the shooty gun! Oh, wait." She pointed it back at Juliet. "It is." She pressed the trigger and the flag shot out – and impaled itself right into Juliet's left eye.

Juliet screamed, this time in pain. She pulled out the flag quickly enough, but blood still spurted from the permanently-blinded eye. "That's it! I've tried to be nice! I've tried to have fun! But you've made my arm sore, strained my perfect voice, made me waste a lot of time and ammo, and it'll be at least two weeks before I can put an order in for a robot eye! I should tear you apart right here, right now!"

"Baby, I'm so sorr- wait, you can get robot body parts?!" Nick exclaimed.

Pain instantly forgotten, Juliet blinked with her remaining eye and replied "Yeah! You don't think every monster hunter goes through their life without losing a limb or two, do you?"

"So…you think they could make a whole robot body? For, say, a head kept alive through magic?"

Juliet tilted her head to the left, clearly thinking. "I dunno – it'd be a lot of work, and would need tons of parts if you want to do anything with it."

"Especially is you want to do…ahem, anything with it." Nick acknowledged. "Lots of parts. Spindles, widgets, and at least two nuts."

"Don't forget the screws!" Juliet reminded him.

"Baby," Nick replied, "the nuts are for the screws. It would also need at least one shaft. Maybe more."

"Don't be silly! What could you do with an extra shaft in your body?"

"I can think of a few things. Definitely would help the cogs and the couplings."

"STOP THAT! You deserve way more than that little retina replacement!" Harley shouted back.

None of them noticed the moaning and groaning heading their way.

"WHAT DID I DO TO YOU?" Juliet continued the shouting.

"MY. FAVORITE. BLOUSE!"

"Third-favorite," Nick corrected.

"MY PREFERENCES ARE DETERMINED BY ANGER! AND I AM VERY ANGRY!"

The zombie noises grew louder.

Juliet stuttered. "Yeah? Well…you're white!"

Nick mentally sighed. "Juliet, we're all white."

"Nuh-uh! There were, like, twelve black students at our school!"

"And now they're zombies and we've probably killed them." Nick crossed his eyes. "Wait, does that make us racis-"

"YEARGH!" Harley jumped at them, swinging a giant sword. Juliet dove down and sliced through it with ease.

Harley clamped her teeth and threw the handle behind her. Completely ignorant of the zombified faces appearing in the roof's hole behind her, she took out a remote with a single button. "Fine! I'll just explode you!"

"You can't do that!" Juliet shouted at her.

"Yes, I can! All those zombie hands, legs, heads, and fingers in that giant cake? All bombs!"

Nick blinked. "HOW?!"

"The powers of us gods are far beyond you mortals!" proclaimed Harley. "The, uh, candles were supposed to set them off…but I forgot to buy the flammable zombie body parts back at Apokolips-R-Us." She waved the remote in the air. "But this trigger will make them all explode at once!"

"Hold on," Juliet stepped forward, trying to reason this out in her head. "But if you do that – you'll blow up, too! And that's bad! Well, for you. Good for me. But then I'll be dead, so it can't be good for me if I don't exist. So don't do it!"

"IMMA DO IT!" Harley shouted, finger moving towards the trigger.

"DON'T YOU DARE!"

Harley put her finger on the button. "IMMA DO IT!"

"So, am I the only one of us who notices that we are SURROUNDED BY ZOMBIES?" Nick shouted.

Harley and Juliet paused and glanced around them. Indeed, while they were talking, hundreds of zombies had dropped in from the hole in the roof and were now running at the three of them.

Harley blinked. Then she turned back to Juliet. "IMMA DO-"

Juliet kicked the remote out of her hand and sent it flying into the cake. She then turned around to slice a zombie's head clean off its shoulder. She was suddenly swarmed by six more, but managed to destroy each one carefully and quickly with her chainsaw.

Harley, meanwhile, had equipped the Harleen Hammer, and was flattening every zombie that came her way with ease. One swing could take out three of the shambling figures, splattering their body parts everywhere. Juliet did similarly well with the Bedazzled Chainsaw, hacking and slashing and stylizing her way to victory against dozens of zombies. She jumped over one's head and switched to her Chainsaw Blaster, then began letting loose, destroying several zombies with every one of the five blasts she unleashed. Seeing an opportunity, Harley flipped a zombie over her shoulder, pulled out a handgun, and fired at Juliet. Instantly seeing the shot coming, Juliet double-flipped through the air, snapping two zombies' necks, dodging the bullet, and firing off three grenades at Harley, who sent two zombies at two of them with a swing of her hammer, then shot the one unblocked grenade out of the air with a perfectly placed bullet. She twirled around on her leftmost toe and fired off five more shots into the heads of zombies. Seeing her gun out of bullets, she tossed it through the air where it hit another zombie on the head, knocking it out cold. While the bodies of the five around her were still falling, she whammed them with the Harleen Hammer at Juliet, who incinerated them all with one fired grenade.

Juliet sliced through four more zombies and fired three more rounds at Harley, who casually backflipped out of the way of each and every one of them, as if she could see them in slow motion. Harley whipped out a shotgun, and was somehow able to duel-wield both her hammer and the gun, and strike her targets accurately with both every time. Juliet clamped her teeth. She was having a little more trouble than usual thanks to her disabled eye – she kept swinging at a zombie only to realize she was swinging in the wrong spot. But she was still good. Better than this pretender. This non-monster hunter who hunted monsters and hunted her! What?

Juliet shook her head and leapt up to the ceiling. She stuck her chainsaw blade into the ceiling and stood there, hanging from above, way farther than any zombie could reach. Harley looked up and squinted. She then began taking potshots at Juliet while simultaneously holding off the horde of zombies that was quickly losing interest in the meat they couldn't reach. But Juliet was fast and agile enough to dodge every bullet that came her way, even while in mid-air. She stuck out her tongue at Harley. She just had to wait this one out.

"So…uh, what we doin' up here?" Nick questioned.

"Oh," Juliet laughed. "Just waiting. See, those zombies can't reach me here, and that girl can't shoot me down. Sooner or later, either she's going to die, or the zombies are. Or both."

"And…you can hang on for that long?"

"Oh, Nicky, I can hang on for as long as I need to. I have great stamina! What's your stamina like?"

"Um…let's talk about something else."

Harley slammed her hammer through another zombie's head. This sucked. She was trapped in a dim building lit only by stage lights, surrounded by moaning men who just wanted a bite of her. It was like college all over again. And to top it all off, her target, the person she was supposed to kill, was casually hanging on the ceiling and dodging every shot Harley could make. This ceiling was especially high – Harley doubted she could make it up there with just a jump. She just needed to coax Juliet out of there.

"So," she shouted to Juliet, "you're just going to hang around here? Watch me take out all these zombies by myself?"

"That's pretty much the plan, yes."

"Great. They were too much for you, I get it. No problem."

Juliet's remaining eye twitched. "What?"

"Oh, no," Nick groaned.

"You're letting me do all this work because you don't want to. I get it. It'd be hard to be a zombie killer or monster hunter. You're not the kind of person who'd like that."

"How dare you judge me like that! Nick, sue her!"

"No," Harley continued, "you'd much rather sit on the sidelines, watching the others do the work, and then take the credit. There are lots of people like you."

"There's nobody else like me! And I do stuff! I never sit back and watch – I get right into the action and kill up everything!"

"Right." Harley judo-flipped a zombie into another zombie. "And what exactly do you do again?"

"Uh, duh! I'm a cheerleader!"

"And what do cheerleaders do? Sit back and watch others win, and then take the credit for it. Hmm, now why does that sound familiar?"

"Hey! That's…not what I do! I, uh, I'm also a monster hunter!"

"And this is how you monster hunt? Sit back and watch others- I mean, not to sound like a broken record, but the pattern's getting obvious."

"No! I don't! My whole family – I mean, sure, I haven't fought THAT much compared to my dad, but he's like…uh, I, uh, I don't!"

"Oh, yeah?" Harley grinned and backhanded a zombie across the room. "Prove it."

"Uh, Juliet, don't listen to her. Your plan's well and goo-WAH!" Nick exclaimed as Juliet flipped herself upside down, pushed against the ceiling with her legs, and dug out the chainsaw before landing perfectly back onto the floor.

Juliet spun around with the chainsaw. "We'll see who's the slacker here! Nick Popper!"

Nick stopped short. "Wait, wha-"

Juliet grabbed Nick's disembodied head and held it up. "You're so sexy, Nick!" she declared happily before kissing his forehead. Instantly, her chainsaw transformed into a loudspeaker-looking cannon and she began launching Nick at various zombies, each one halting and remaining stunned after being hit. In only a couple a seconds, they were surrounded only by stunned zombies.

"That freakin' hurt!" Nick shouted.

"Not as much as this will," Juliet laughed out. She revved up the Bedazzled Chainsaw and spun around in a circle, decapitating seven zombies at once, and kicked one of the flying heads right out of the air and at Harley, who winked and bounced it away with her hammer. The head went through several other zombies, knocking them down like bowling pins, and…kept going. And going.

Right into the cake.

And right onto the button.

Seeing its trajectory, Harley's eyes bugged out. "Well, uh, have a nice day!" She jumped on top of a zombie and used it as a launching pad to get through the hole in the ceiling. She flipped off the roof of the theater and onto the roof of the garden club, but even with her speed, she only made it halfway across before the theater was lit up in an enormous explosion, incinerating everything inside of it – and a good portion of the building she was on top of. The explosion's air impact caught her off-guard and sent her falling to the ground dozens of feet away, where her body scraped and skated across the grass and tore up, well, everything, before finally coming to a halt right next to the edge of the outdoor swim-team's practice pool. Why would the swim team use an outdoor pool, she had no idea, but this school was already weird and perverted. It wasn't that big of a surprise. She got up bruised, with her healing factor quickly covering any serious wounds.

Well, at least she'd completed her mission. She stood up and looked over at the rubble left over from the explosion – what little there was left. Every one of those finger bombs could have probably taken out that building, and there were a bunch of more powerful bombs than that in that cake. There was no way any normal human could survive an explosion of that magnitude.

Then the dust cleared, revealing a rainbow-colored chainsaw-wielding not-incinerated girl in the middle.

"Well. That sucks."

Juliet reached her target with a Chainsaw Dash in less than a second. Harley immediately struck her over the head with the Harleen Hammer, but it did absolutely nothing thanks to Juliet's Star Soul Power. Juliet smiled a deadly smile at Harley, then sliced at her with the Bedazzled Chainsaw. She was much faster than she'd been before - she caught Harley off-guard and sent her soaring into the air with a spurt of blood. While she was still in mid-air, Juliet launched four grenades at her, each one of each hit their target. Harley fell back to the ground, gasping and smoking. Juliet batted her away again with the chainsaw, and kept blasting away. By the time Harley was able to react, she'd already been struck three times.

But she'd been on the losing end of the stick before. Harley jumped up and flipped out of the way of the next two grenades. She threw out over a dozen bombs, and each one hit Juliet in succession, but their explosions did nothing to her rainbow-colored body. Juliet used the Chainsaw Dash to close the distance between them and slammed her chainsaw's hilt into Harley's forehead, sending her back to the ground, head cut and bleeding. A point-blank blast from the Chainsaw Blaster later, and she fell back, holding her stomach in pain. Even as the Star Soul Power wore off, Harley still ran and leapt all the way across the pool, landing on the other side of the pool without once touching the water. Juliet grumbled and launched two more grenades across the pool at Harley, who quickly dodged both. Harley suddenly jumped into the pool with a huge splash, one that…didn't really work with the laws of physics. Juliet turned instinctively to avoid being caught in the splash, and by the time she'd turned back, Harley was gone.

"Oh...drat! DRAT! DRATTY DRAT DRAT!"

"Wow, you kiss your mother with that mouth?" Nick asked sarcastically.

"Where'd she go?!"

"Relax, babe. You've got eyes in the back of your head, remember? Well, back of the a-"

"I'M BACK!" Harley shouted from a few dozen feet away before opening fire on them with a sniper rifle.

Instantly Juliet turned and sliced the bullet out of the air. She transformed her weapon back into the Chainsaw Blaster and took aim. "And…you're gone!" she shot at Harley, who quickly front-flipped over the grenade, switched to a shotgun, and took a shot. Juliet dodged to the side and began walking forward, shooting forth another grenade. Harley matched her pace forward, shooting again. Both easily dodged the other's projectile and kept walking and shooting. Two potshots later on both sides, and they were only a few feet away. Harley switched to her hammer and punted the blaster away at the last moment before it shot another grenade to her face. She twirled around and swung her hammer, only stopping it mere inches from Juliet's cheek when her head turned and found itself face-to-face with the end of the Chainsaw Blaster.

The two held their poses, each on the verge of destroying the other, for less than a second before Juliet pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.

Harley grinned wickedly and shook her head, ponytails bouncing. "Thirty-six shots, right? You don't keep count too well."

"Uh, Juliet?" Nick questioned, face paling.

Harley pressed a flower on her jester jacket, sending a spray of acid into Juliet's remaining eye. Juliet screamed in pain and desperately tried to claw it out before Harley slammed into her stomach again with her hammer, throwing Juliet a bit backwards – right as the end of the hammer popped off, revealing a rocket inside of it.

"And...checkmate." Harley fired the rocket right into Juliet's face, creating an explosion that forced Juliet through the air, landing in the pool, the weight of her chainsaw pulling her to the bottom. Harley giggled and pulled out a large bottle of Joker Venom, which she poured into the pool water. At the bottom, a barely conscious Juliet began sniffing up bits of water. Something tickled her nose, and suddenly, she was laughing – laughing and inhaling enormous draughts of water.

It wasn't two minutes before she stopped laughing altogether.

 **-KO!-**

Harley snorted. "Well, that was annoying. Time to find a new favorite blouse!" She finished off the job by dumping all of her remaining hundreds of bombs into the pool, exploding them all with the press of a button hours later from outer space.

 **…**

Well, that's the last time Juliet's ever going to go bang.

This was certainly a close match – a fact that somewhat surprised me, considering how much more content one character has to fall back on than the other. But when we dole out the classic advantages, they're basically dead even. That in itself certainly doesn't guarantee a close fight, but the really annoying thing is how for every advantage one of them takes, the other has some sort of advantage that cancels it out.

Both have around equal levels of strength – while Harley has performed one or two feats more impressive than anything Juliet has, Juliet has more feats around that caliber than Harley does, so it evens out pretty well. Harley has a superior fighting style, but Juliet makes up for it with her better agility. Harley has more natural skill, but Juliet has had far more training. In terms of experience, Harley is far more used to dealing with large threats, but Juliet has been fighting and killing things years longer than Harley – so that evens out, too. In fact, they were also even when it came to their arsenals - Harley's large arsenal enables more options, but the Bedazzled Chainsaw alone exceeds almost everything Harley has, but its comparative lack in variety means she isn't able to perform as many creative feats. And while Juliet's lollipops are way more effective healing items, Harley's plant and healing factor are certainly more easily accessed, since there's no need to stop a fight for twenty seconds to shake a head and hope some candy comes out.

And then there's the big problem. Harley's speed and Juliet's durability. Both way outclass the other fighter in those specific aspects, and that's one of the things that made determining a winner very difficult. Juliet has never reached or even fought anybody with anywhere close to Mach 3 capabilities, while Harley not only has, but has exceeded them, being able to reach up to Mach 5 and, on one occasion, even Mach 12, when to comes to pure fighting speed! Juliet's lack of experience dealing with someone that fast meant there was no real way she was getting a hit in anytime soon. However, she could likely still dodge a fair amount of Harley's attempted attacks, and even if any connected, it wouldn't do much. Juliet shrugging off that 475 Ton explosion is way more impressive than any durability feats Harley's performed – in fact, she was knocked out by an explosion that was only worth around 180 Tons. So there was really nothing that Harley had on her that could do any real damage to Juliet. But with the utter lack of hits available, chances of Juliet accessing her Star Soul Power were minimal at best, and Harley can certainly dodge for another 20 seconds if she does manage to activate it. And even if Juliet did land a few hits, Harley's bonus against cutting attacks and healing factor meant it'd be very unlikely for her to die from just a few stray chainsaw blows. And her surviving that 180 Ton crash means even a direct hit from the Chainsaw Blaster isn't anything she can't handle. But at least the Bedazzled Chainsaw could kill Harley eventually if Juliet could hit her. But the fact that Harley is so much faster than Juliet and has an entire fighting style based off making sure she's not hit means that she won't be dying anytime soon. And neither was Juliet with her indestructibility and relatively high skill ceiling.

So both have advantages that only serve to cancel each other out, and neither can normally kill the other quickly. Sounds like a draw, right? Well, to be fair, most of the time, it would be. The two would realize that the fight is useless and would go out for ice cream or something. But this is Death Battle, and the entire point of the show is to answer the unanswerable. If they were to stick it out and fight until one of them died, who would win?

Well, at this point, the only real way for one to kill the other is to have a superior fighting style, a natural talent for improvisation, and the ability to find and, over time, exploit her opponent's weaknesses. It'd also help if they had a history of doing so against foes as powerful as their opponent or even more powerful. Is this sounding familiar yet?

Juliet is tough, yes, but Harley has managed to deal with tougher. Her victories against the likes of General Zod and Zorcrom prove that she can handle even nearly invincible foes with the right strategies and enough time to pull it off. And when it comes to foes without incredible weaknesses like electricity, sunlight, or radiation, she's still defeated the likes of Killer Croc and Poison Ivy, both of whom were certainly around or possibly even above Juliet's level of durability. Simply put, Harley has fought way more powerful foes than Juliet before and somehow almost always sticks the landing. All she needs is the time to understand what to exploit, how to do it, and an opportunity to do so. And with her speed, healing factor, sheer toughness, and far greater intelligence, she made it happen. It doesn't help that Juliet is relatively inexperienced in 1v1 matchups, has never fought someone quite that bright, and has been tricked before by people not nearly as clever as Harley Quinn.

Basically, when everything they could do completely evened out against each other, the only way for one of these fighters to win was to have the experience, creativity, and knowledge to pull a victory out of the air – and Harley was the only one to have all three in this aspect, and a history of doing so to boot.

Harley was the Quintessential Star of this show.

 **The winner is Harley Quinn.**

 **…**

Next time, on Death Battle…

A black and red hedgehog knocks out his blue rival with a surprise blow to the neck, sending him into the ground.

VS.

A black and red-haired girl wearing a kamui triumphantly holds her opponent's own sword to her throat.

(Shadow vs. Ryuko)


	15. Shadow vs Ryuko

_Episode 13: Shadow (Sonic) vs. Ryuko (Kill la Kill)_

It's not often you find a couple of red and black antiheroes born by way of combining alien and scientific influence that were also specifically made to allow an alien race to feed on humans like livestock and were granted supernatural powers by being infused with a powerful otherworldly force only to for them to lose their memories, hate all of humanity and then try to save it for no real reason, and who unlock their full powers by way of a wristband-like device AND who each have exactly four super forms, one of which is a combination of two previous forms and the final of which is a red and gold flying form that saved the entire planet and then survived a fall from space after passing out immediately after. But, when you do, you make them fight to the death.

Shadow the Hedgehog, the Ultimate Life Form and prominent wielder of the Chaos Force, and Ryuko Matoi, savior of Hinnouji Academy (and the world) and prominent wielder of Life Threads.

Oh, and no Archie Shadow. Again, he's way too OP and too different from normal Shadow. I mean, the guy one-shotted a dude who could destroy the universe. Come on. Normal Shadow has never done anything like that in any form. Aside from that, standard rules apply – meaning non-canon stuff is counted as supporting material, anything that contradicts the official material is nullified, and just go to the first chapter for the other rules that ensure the fight is both entertaining and unbiased – at least, as much as it can be. Also, there's a fair amount of swearing in this episode. I mean, Ryuko swears, like, constantly in the source material. Don't get offended and sue me.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.

 **Shadow:**

Imagine a world where there is no sickness. Where there is no hate, no animosity. No hopelessness, no failure you can't come back from. A world ruled by those both powerful and just and yet kind and understanding, a world where freedom rings true. A world where everyone has access to awesome superpowers. A world…without death. Such a place sounds like paradise, yes – and Shadow the Hedgehog was the creature that was supposed to make it all possible.

Fifty years ago – or, well, more like sixty-five, but who cares, aboard the moon-size space station Space Colony ARK, Professor Gerald Robotnik, the world's greatest scientific mind in the history of ever, sought to find the answer to immortality, and, as a result, to utopia. He believed that if he could harness the potentially limitless energy of the Chaos Force (which most people know as the thing that makes Chaos Emeralds powerful) and transform it into a creature, they would all take one great leap forward in science and human nature. There was just one problem – there was no real way to make a creature capable of both withstanding and utilizing the concept of being made into a living portal of said energy using only his earthly means – his first experiment, the Biolizard, was a colossal failure. That's when the hive-mind alien race known as the Black Arms came into the picture. They offered up their knowledge and DNA in exchange for a small favor – that the creature would gather the Chaos Emeralds for them in fifty years and help them enslave humanity. For some reason, Gerald agreed, and, through fusing alien DNA with natural organic material with a healthy dosage of the Chaos Force, Shadow the Hedgehog was born.

Created to protect humanity and guide them towards a better future, Shadow underwent intense physical training to perfect his powers aboard the Space Colony ARK. However, the fact that very few people lived there was kind of a problem for his whole "helping humanity" mission training – or would have been if weren't for Gerald's granddaughter Maria. She and Shadow became fast friends, almost like brother and sister. She taught him about dreams, emotions, and the good side of humanity. Oh, and also the bad, when the United Nations invaded the ARK because Gerald's alien trading habits had gone way too far and…murdered Maria right in front of Shadow. Shadow didn't even have a chance to mourn before being launched down onto the planet below, put into hypersleep, and locked up under government surveillance at all times. When he was awoken by Dr. Eggman (who also happened to be Gerald's grandson), he was naturally pissed off, and, realizing there was no way to go back in time and save Maria, decided that the rest of the world should pay. Then he set into an elaborate scheme to destroy the planet before having Sonic literally beat the sense into him and getting the "people are good" speech from Amy, which then triggered a bunch of memories of Maria specifically asking Shadow _not_ to kill everyone. Whoops. Well, he got his act together, and saved the world. Then he lost his memories, got them back, and saved the world again, then he lost his memories, got them back, and saved the world again, and then he lost- okay, you get it. The point is, Shadow now fights for good – as long as fighting for good lines up with whatever he feels like doing at the moment. And that's…most of Shadow's origin story.

Phew, wasn't that an overcomplicated mess? That's what happens, I guess, when you try to stuff the backstories of three games and a TV Show into a character bio. Though there are a few things they never bothered to explain. For example, why the heck did Gerald want to save humanity, then destroy it, then save it, then destroy it, and then save it? How is it that the Black Arms never got word about what happened to Shadow until the deadline was up? Why do aliens from across the universe know who Gerald Robotnik and Shadow are? And why do Sonic and Shadow look so incredibly similar? Seriously, their origin stories are totally different, so how? Well, I suppose it could be possible that both having a similar connection to the Chaos Force could have mutated them both to have similar abilities and looks by pure coincidence – but even that's hard to buy. Luckily, Shadow doesn't need to know how he's able to kick so much crap in order to actually do it. Why giving a hedgehog meant to bring about world peace and immortality powers and energy attacks very much meant to kill everything in its way was thought to be a good idea, I don't know, but thank the great Pokémon in the Sky somebody did it.

Being a living transcendent of the Chaos Force has granted Shadow a variety of Superpowers, almost all of which are surprisingly useful. He's fast enough to dodge laser fire from entire armies, tough enough to take falls from space, and so powerful, he can smash right through Eggman's Secret Lair's door with just a punch – and that thing is especially designed to be stronger than any normal metal. When it comes to normal titanium doors, like the blast doors on the Blue Typhoon, he can literally just walk right through them! He heals faster than any human, can rapid-fire teleport, and can even form tornadoes with just a kick. He can even manipulate his own personal gravity field, allowing him to do things like walk on walls and over water or hover in mid-air and fly through space. Oh, right, and he can breathe while underwater and in space. He's also one of the few Sonic characters to be able to utilize Hyper-Go-On Power without any outside help. This alternative power source allows Shadow to shapeshift for a few minutes into a couple of different forms. With Cyan Hyper-Go-On, he transforms into an actual laser, moving at the speed of light and reflecting off of any surface. With Yellow, he transforms into a massive drill that can tunnel through nearly anything at high speeds, and with Indigo, he becomes a floating asteroid with a high gravity field.

And we haven't even gotten to his far more dangerous Chaos Force attacks! See, Shadow has the ability to manipulate the Chaos Force as a destructive…erm, force. Specifically in the form of energy beams and projectiles. With Chaos Arrow, he can throw out hundreds of arrow-shaped projectiles that hit like bullets and hurt like lightning. Chaos Spears are even more powerful and shaped like lightning bolts, though he can't throw quite as many at once. At full power, a single Chaos Spear can uproot and destroy an entire city street! The final level is Chaos Lance, which throws out dozens of explosive energy lances that are more powerful than any previous projectile. But making projectiles isn't all he can do with Chaos Energy. With Air Chaos, he can create distorted patches of reality that he can use to trap opponents, hide in, or just make explode. He increases the power of his blows by manipulating the spatial alignment of his fists with Chaos Upper, and turns into a high-speed projectile powerful enough to obliterate a skyscraper with Boost. With Shadow Dash, he uses the Chaos Force to ram ahead a short distance at the speed of light, with Shadow Heal he can heal himself (though grievous wounds take time), and Chaos Ball can create powerful balls of chaos energy that explode upon impact. He can even open up portals to the eternal void and toss his foes in there, _instantly killing them_ – though he can only do so when they're either beaten to near-death or knocked out, and it takes an incredible amount of energy. But his most powerful attack is Chaos Blast. This absurdly almighty energy attack absolutely annihilates anything in its way (I adore alliteration). It can be spread over a 60-foot radius or condensed into a kamehameha-like energy beam, but it's just as deadly either way.

But his most powerful move in his entire arsenal is the legendary Chaos Control. Since Chaos Energy is embedded into the essence of time and space, controlling that energy also…well, gives you control over time and space, and Shadow is a master of it. He can use the ability to teleport extremely long distances, disperse some attacks, create invisible shields, make himself more powerful, and, at his strongest, slow down or even stop time for twenty-four seconds across an area the size of a city. With the assistance of Chaos Emeralds, he can teleport across dimensions, and with help from another Chaos Control user, he can even travel through time. Wait, can't he save Maria, then? And regain his memories every time he loses them? Eh, whatever.

The only problem was that Shadow had so much power, he didn't have the energy to sustain his own abilities. During fights, he would often pass out within a few minutes. Because of this, Gerald invented two inhibitor rings that reduce his power in return for a massive increase in stamina. Luckily, that's not all the equipment he has to help him out. While it's technically up to the game's player to determine his equipment during his adventure against the Nocturnis, given Shadow's personality and fighting style, it's probable that he'd try to increase his pure power before all else, so he likely wears Cursed Gloves, which greatly increases his strength in return for a slight decrease in durability. That decrease is somewhat made up for by his Spiked Sneakers, which increases both strength and durability, and allows Shadow to reach his classic level of incredible speeds. It's rounded off by the Kron Hammer, a charm he wears that increases his strength once more by a great amount. By measuring this equipment in comparison to Shadow's initial stats when he joins your party, all together this gives him an 89% increase in strength – and a 4% decrease in durability. That's more than worth it.

He also wears the Flame Ring, which allows him some small control over fire and lets him break through metal. Because he totally couldn't do that already. Totally. Okay, in all seriousness, seeing as how effortlessly he smashes through dozens of titanium robots with one move, those crates it lets him break are probably enhanced by Eggman's design, so it probably also increases his strength. And, finally, with the Ancient Light charm, he gains a seventh sense that tells him exactly where his enemies are at all times. He also utilizes several guns to compliment his magical armor. While most of these guns are just…well, guns that have no business being in his arsenal, he does have a few plasma rifles, missile launchers, vacuum guns (not joking), a satellite "gun" that brings down laser fire from the sky, and the Shadow Rifle, a gun that one-shots just about everything. He also holds the Samurai Blade, an eight-foot surprisingly durable sword that can fire sword beams, which he wields with expert skill. Now that's something that'll really make you go "ow the edge"!

Okay, outdated meme is outdated and…actually, kind of inaccurate. Shadow may have become infamous for being the edgy cool character who hates everyone, and therefore is the guy that all the tweens love, but that's not all that true. Sure, there was that one time he tried to destroy the multiverse because he's a sore loser, but, for the most part, he's saved the world and put his own life at extreme risk many times and outright taken near-fatal blows for innocent people with no real reward. His moodiness and constant angry posture isn't even entirely his fault; see, Shadow has lost his memories an exuberant amount of times. Seriously, it's ridiculous. And yet, during every instance, the only thing he does remember of his life is…Maria's death. As a result of this memory becoming so imbued into his mind, pounding further and further each time, his mental emotional pillars have very likely been unintentionally rebuilt to stand on things like pain, anger, and loss. He doesn't wave off help and snarl at the notion of caring for others because he's just too cool for school (most of the time). He does it because he's afraid to gain friends and people he cares about…and then lose them again. To be fair, it's hard to blame him when all his would-be friends happen to have the most dangerous job in the universe. Still, he managed to make some friends regardless and help out extensively with that job. If there's one thing Shadow's proved, it's that he doesn't need weapons or armor to be accomplish incredible things.

Shadow's fighting style is based on aggression and power. He uses techniques like the Spin Dash, Spin Attack, and Homing Attack (during all of which he curls up to become a buzzsaw of pain using his stiffening spikes) to overwhelm his foes with barrages of high-speed attacks. He far more likes to punch the daylights out of his enemies' heads rather than go for any real weak points. He's strong enough to get away with it, though – he's put craters in metal just from his punch's kinetic energy after hitting someone else, destroyed over a dozen robots just by running next to them, and even obliterated the X-Tornado, a spaceship that can take laser fire from an army with just a few Chaos Spears. He's completely bulletproof, survived a black hole, and took out most of the United States' armed forces in less than a day. However, if the situation calls for it, he's more than capable of forming specific strategies mid-fight to gain an advantage.

 _As Shadow barrels against the Scarship with a spin attack, trying to dig into it, he realizes he can't even make a dent in its insanely durable armor._

" _You cannot harm me!" the Scarship declares proudly._

 _Instantly, Shadow switches up his moves, zooming across all aspects of the ship, Spin Attacking at every point, then bouncing to somewhere new and doing it again. He covers the whole ship several times with a barrage of Spin Attacks, and though they do nothing to the hull, something begins to happen._

" _URGH!" the Scarship stumbles in shock and pain._

" _Well done, Shadow!" Eggman shouts out._

" _What kind of attack is that?" Decoe asks, puzzled._

 _Bocoe, just as confused, replies "I have no clue."_

 _Eggman shoves a bucket on each of their heads. "Allow me to demonstrate!" he begins pounding away at the buckets with two wooden mallets. At the end, though the buckets have received no damage, the two robots fall to the ground, dazed and confused. "As you can see, a series of rapid strikes on the ship's hull will create an intense vibration, which will shake the ship apart from the inside!"_

 _It isn't long before the ship goes flying, heavily damaged, but still looking pristine._

And while he's defeated plenty of powerful fighters, if there's any way to measure him at his best, it's to put him up against his longtime rival, Sonic the Hedgehog.

Actually, that brings up an interesting point regarding Shadow's speed. He and Sonic have matched speed plenty of times before, but Sonic didn't always take such fights seriously, Shadow has outright admitted that Sonic is faster than him, and Shadow has never displayed light-speed capabilities in base form. So…how fast is he? Well, as shown in my version of Mario vs. Sonic, Sonic always seems to have three levels of speed he typically goes at (measuring from over seventy speed feats): at or under 16,000 MPH (Casual), around 350,000 MPH (more serious), and light-speed, or around 671,000,000 MPH (showing off or being super serious). Judging from how Sonic always sticks to one of these three groups, we'll pick out the middle one (350,000 MPH) as what to judge Shadow by. Besides, it fits with his other speed feats, like racing between entire countries in less than a minute (184,000 MPH), outracing Metal Sonic (220,000 MPH), outracing an artificial lightning bolt (224,000 MPH), keeping up with a robot that could fly to the moon in around an hour (239,000 MPH), moving fast enough to be invisible to an alien who could easily spot an extremely fast rocket (372,000 MPH), and outracing an explosion after it started, carrying two people dozens of miles away before it finished (412,000 MPH). So, yeah, seems fair.

But even without the speed advantage, he's held his own in battles against the Blue Blur. He's kicked Sonic through three trees and a concrete wall, smashed into him hard enough to obliterate a massive robot, and punched him into the ground with a blow so powerful, it made a 32-foot crater when he landed. These two have duked it out so hard that, one time, a single collision between them leveled a city block! Even when he's not fighting Sonic, he's usually fighting somebody, and making them wish they never knew him. Shadow's defeated many powerful foes, including the world-famous jewel thief and spy Rouge the Bat, legendary hero of the future Silver the Hedgehog, the absurdly powerful robot Metal Sonic, the original ultimate life form the Biolizard, and even Mephiles, an incarnation of an ancient god. This guy Mephiles was so powerful, he could destroy a floor just by looking at it – and this floor was especially large. By directly measuring its size and shape next to both Shadow and Mephiles, if properly stacked, that's enough wood to construct a two-story house! AND HE DESTROYED ALL OF IT WITH A LOOK. AND SHADOW BEAT HIM. THREE TIMES. He even held his own against and, after a long battle and a fair amount of luck, defeated the android Emerl after he'd absorbed the power of all seven Chaos Emeralds! Though it should be noted that this was a friendly competition and when Emerl went all out, Shadow lost quite badly. But even still, surviving a beating from someone as incredibly powerful as Ultimate Emerl is quite impressive. Oh, and remember how the Black Arms wanted him to gather the Chaos Emeralds and use them to enslave humanity? Well, when they showed up fifty years down the line to collect their price, Shadow just killed the crap out of them. He wiped the floor with all three members of the Chaotix Detective Agency, mercilessly slaughtered a powerful band of mercenaries, and defeated Amy, Tails, Sticks, and Knuckles all at the same time! Hey, he was tough enough to withstand a beating by Knuckles, who's strong enough the break apart cataclysmic asteroids! Judging from the distance of the largest break and how many pieces it shattered into (given that a world-ending asteroid must be about 2 km in diameter), Knuckles had to have punched the thing with at least 29 Megatons of Force! And Shadow can take a hit from him, no problem!

He's survived dozens of point-blank explosions, including that one he and Sonic made that destroyed a city block. Most impressively, he even survived a huge series of explosions that destroyed an entire island, though he was knocked out afterward. By judging the size of the blast and the size of the island they blew up, Shadow would have withstood a total explosive force of around 800 kilotons of TNT. Yeah, it's really hard to put him down – not even a battalion of Metarex spaceships (which are each way more powerful than anything Eggman's ever done) can do it. Shadow just ends up destroying the whole thing in a matter of seconds! And, perhaps most impressively, he once won a game of tug-of-war with a giant three-headed monster that was trying to destroy the galaxy – and this thing was so big that just one of the head's teeth was twice as big as Shadow! It's an established general fact that, when it comes to organic humanoid-ish creatures, when you double the height, you multiply the weight by eight. So, comparing this giant head to Shadow's size and weight (and adding in the weights of the other heads), this monster's mass comes in as 1,941,840 tons! And none of this even counts his super forms!

Right. So, Shadow can manipulate the Chaos Force to an incredible degree, obviously, but it goes even beyond what you might think. He can actually use the Chaos Force to transform himself and gain four separate Super Forms. The first two are…interesting. Now, the Chaos Force (like the other Force!) has two sides: Light and Dark, and different characters can use different sides of the Chaos Force. Shadow, however, is unique. Due to his nature of being one with the Chaos Force (to some degree), he can utilize both sides, which manifests as Chaos Control and Space-Time Manipulation (Light) and Energy Attacks (Dark). He can also use this power to transform into two Super Forms: Dark Shadow and Hero Shadow. Think Ryu's Satsui no Hado and Mu no Ken. Dark Shadow's Chaos Energy Attacks are way more powerful than normal and drain almost no energy, and Hero Shadow has way more control of Chaos Control and is completely invulnerable, plus has a speed boost. Unfortunately, both only last around a minute at most – so it's lucky that they're overshadowed (hah, puns) by his third form. After figuring out who he truly is and what he's meant to be, Shadow achieved balance within the Chaos Force and was able to activate a brand-new Super Form known as Chaos Boost. Chaos Boost combines all the powers and abilities of both Dark and Hero Shadow and lasts way longer.

And remember, at any point, he can remove his inhibitor rings and gain a massive boost in power at the expense of quickly draining his energy. Without those rings on, he's knocked out Knuckles with just a spin attack, destroyed massive space stations, and, with a little help from Sonic, even the Metarex Scarship, a giant spaceship that could easily take laser fire from an army of other spaceships and then obliterate them all in just two minutes. Remember that guy Mephiles? Well, he cloned himself an army of…him, and so Shadow just removed his rings and completely wasted all of them in record time. At another point, he removed his rings and pulverized an entire fleet of Metarex spaceships (again, each of which is way more powerful than anything Eggman's ever built) _with a single move_. That's…nuts. But none of these power boosts can come close to Shadow's ultimate form.

Chaos Emeralds are gemstones that also act as doorways to the Chaos Force by way of the Master Emerald. This means that they can enhance any normal being to new heights, and creatures like Sonic and Shadow who are already embodiments of chaos get…crazy. Shadow grows in power with every Chaos Emerald he holds, and, with the power of all seven Chaos Emeralds, he makes his final transformation into Super Shadow. Gold, red, glowing, and insanely powerful, Super Shadow's power is incredible. His stats are boosted to insane amounts, he can fly, and he can use all of his Chaos Force abilities with almost no real limits. He's strong enough to lift space stations, fast enough for flight at the speed of light, and tough enough to withstand the full force of the Space Colony ARK charging into the Earth/Mobius's atmosphere. According to Dr. Eggman, if the ARK crashed into the planet at those speeds, it would have decimated the planet, smashing it to pieces – a feat that would require around 53 Quadrillion Megatons of Force. And Super Shadow not only took this full force, but was able to slow the space station down in its descent! He's defeated Devil Doom and part of the sun god, Solaris, and knocked out Super Sonic with one surprise gut punch. During a full-on battle against Super Sonic, the two accidentally created an anomaly akin to a Black Hole, and together with Super Sonic, he destroyed a planetoid that could have wiped out life across the galaxy. He was also powerful enough to not only teleport a 915 Million Ton comet, but also to destroy the whole thing in one blast! The Space Colony ARK's laser is typically powered by the Chaos Emeralds, but Super Shadow had already absorbed their powers and scattered them, so he had to supply the destructive force via the Space Colony ARK himself. Factoring the radius and mass and assuming gravity similar to Earth, the amount of explosive energy Super Shadow himself would have had to produce is just under _5,000 Gigatons of TNT_!

And he can even remove his inhibitor rings while transformed as Super Shadow to gain even more power – enough power to tear holes in the fabric of reality, teleport the moon-sized Space Colony ARK hundreds of miles away, and stop time around an area the size of a solar system for several minutes! The big problem? Well, unlike Sonic, Shadow has yet to master Super Shadow, and so has only ever remained in the form for four minutes at most. It gets even worse when he takes off his inhibitor rings. As Super Shadow without being inhibited, he gets stupid powerful – and has stupid low amounts of stamina. He'll pass out after just _thirty seconds_ and, even though he returns to top shape after coming out of his Super State, when he does wake up, during every incident he's done this, he loses his whole memory…again. Maybe the amount of Chaos Energy he's using is just way too much for anyone to handle, even someone as powerful as him. It is important to note, though, that even without his memories, Shadow's genetics force him to automatically know how to use any and all of his powers. But still, if his mind is wiped, that's not going to help too much when he's trying to figure out who and where he is. Even in his normal form, Shadow's still not great when it comes to stamina, which doesn't go well with the fact that he loves toying with weaker opponents and has a huge ego. It's largely due to this fact that he's defeated so often. In addition, it should be mentioned that, while he can teleport his foes along with himself, he can only do so while touching the person he wants to teleport and it must be somewhere he's been before and can easily visualize. So no randomly teleporting his enemies into a black hole. Also, he must have, like, anti-resistance to mind-control. Seriously, you find anyone who can do a Jedi Mind Trick, and they could probably get this guy to commit suicide. It's that bad. The only time he ever was able to even somewhat resist mental manipulation was against Black Doom, and that was only because Gerald knew he'd try it and specifically coded Shadow's DNA to be immune to that specific type of mind-control. And even then, when he shouldn't have even felt their influence, he was still almost taken over by it! What the heck?!

But it's not like mental manipulation is the world's most common power. And Shadow's fast enough and strong enough to kill you a hundred times before you can even try it. Anyone who gets in this guy's way will be feeling a lot more than just the edge.

 _As Dr. Eggman lays in front of him, defeated, Shadow calls forth all of the Chaos Emeralds he has collected, and the one he has just taken from Eggman._

" _Finally…" he declares as the Emeralds circle around him, "I've got all the Chaos Emeralds."_

 _The injured Eggman raises his head and wheezes. "You ungrateful little pest! Have…have you forgotten that it was MY grandfather who created you?!" He grins, clearly hoping that fact means something to Shadow._

 _Shadow stares at him coldly. "I am Shadow the Hedgehog, the ultimate life form, born and raised aboard the ARK." He breathes in a calming breath. "I shall live on. I am the protector of the ARK. I am living proof of the ultimate life form."_

 _He clenches his fist and glares at Eggman._

" _This…is WHO I AM!"_

 **Shadow:**

Name: Shadow the Hedgehog

Species: Hedgehog (Mutated via Alien DNA and Chaos Force)

Height: 3'3"/100 cm

Weight: 77 lb/35 kg

Age: 50+

Occupation: Agent of G.U.N.

Best Friend: E-123 Omega

The Ultimate Lifeform

Umm…might be a robot? That Shadow game is weird

THAT DAMN FOURTH CHAOS EMERALD

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Senses

Superhuman Longevity

Immunity to any and all illnesses

Can breathe without oxygen

Healing Factor

Teleportation

Personal Gravity Manipulation

Tornado Creation

Chaos Force

~Chaos Rift

~Chaos Ball

~Chaos Spear

~Chaos Lance

~Chaos Arrow

~Air Chaos

~Chaos Blast

~Chaos Upper

~Shadow Dash

~Boost

~Shadow Heal

~Chaos Control

 **Transformations:**

Dark Shadow

Hero Shadow

Chaos Boost

Cyan Laser

Yellow Drill

Indigo Asteroid

Super Shadow

 **Arsenal:**

Air Shoes

Ancient Light

Flame Ring

Spiked Sneakers

Cursed Gloves

Kron Hammer

Black Barrel  
Egg Bazooka  
Grenade Launcher  
Tank Cannon  
Heal Cannon

Shadow Rifle

Laser Rifle  
Refractor  
Splitter  
8-Shot RPG

Satellite Gun

Egg Vacuum

Samurai Blade

 **Feats:**

Played tug-of-war with an asteroid-sized plant monster

Pushed back said monster with strength alone

Teleported between dimensions w/ one Chaos Emerald

Matched and defeated Sonic in battle (when Sonic was holding back)

Survived multiple falls from outer space

Wiped out several Metarex ships in less than a second

Moves faster than a powerful robot's eye can track

Survived an island-sized explosion

Survived a black hole

Wiped out half a Metarex fleet in less than a minute

Ran next to a dozen robots so fast, they exploded

Saved the world multiple times

Won a race against Metal Sonic

Defeated Metal Sonic in battle

Defeated Rouge in battle

Defeated Emerl w/ six Emeralds in battle

Defeated Silver in battle

Defeated Team Chaotix in battle

Defeated Black Doom in battle

Defeated Eggman multiple times

Defeated Mephiles multiple times

Defeated Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Sticks all at the same time

One-shotted Knuckles, Cream, Amy

Defeated the Biolizard

Hit Sonic hard enough to smash through three trees and a concrete wall

Slaughtered a group of powerful mercenaries

Left 37 afterimages with ease

Dodged hundreds of lasers at once on several occasions

Completely bulletproof

Effortlessly tore through steel, titanium, and alien metals tougher than both of them combined

Hit Sonic into the ground so hard it created a 32-foot-long crater

Smashed through the door of Eggman's Secret Lair

Knocked out a clone of himself with just a kick

Survived beatings by Knuckles and Ultimate Emerl

Ran between two countries in less than a minute

Equaled speed with a badnik that flew to the moon shortly after, took about one hour

Outraced an artificial lightning bolt

After explosion started, carried to people miles away before it finished

A collision with Sonic leveled a city block

Helped destroy the Metarex Scarship

Wiped out an army of robot Mephiles clones by running through them

Wiped out an army of Metarex with a single blow

 **Feats (Super Shadow):**

Knocked out Super Sonic with one punch

Held back the Space Colony ARK

W/ Super Sonic, destroyed a planetoid capable of wiping out life across the galaxy

Fighting Super Sonic, their clashes created a massive anomaly akin to a black hole

W/ Super Sonic and Super Silver, defeated Solaris

Defeated Devil Doom

Easily teleported the 915 Million Ton Black Comet

Provided enough energy to destroy said comet

Teleported the moon-sized Space Colony ARK hundreds of miles away

Ripped a hole in space-time

Froze time for several minutes around an area at least the size of a solar system

 **Weaknesses:**

Low stamina

Constantly taunts and plays with weaker opponents

Been defeated pretty often

Must have anti-resistance to mind manipulation, it's so easy to affect him with it

Massive ego

Eggman's played him for a fool so many times, it's kind of stupid

W/O Inhibitor Rings, can't last five minutes in battle before passing out

Super Shadow has time limit

Super Shadow W/O Inhibitor Rings has way worse time limit

…

 **Ryuko:**

Imagine a world where your rank at school determines your rank in life. Where the rich get richer, and the poor get killed. Where everyone fights for everything, and somehow always ends up with nothing. Where, whether you're the best tailor or the best doctor, you've killed more people than you've saved. And where everyone can fight, move at supersonic speeds, and wear uniforms that bestow supernatural powers. This is the world…of Kill la Kill.

 _A teenage girl with red and black hair looks up at a mountain, with a large school center at its top. She sets her eyes on it and mutters "There it is. Hinnouji Academy."_

Being born into such a world is rarely an enjoyable experience, but for Ryuko Matoi, things were about to get even worse. After her mother supposedly died when she was just a baby, Ryuko's father, the renowned and respected inventor Isshin Matoi, stopped getting along too well with Ryuko, and sent her off to a boarding school. Apparently, this was one of those special boarding schools that turns you into a badass, because when she left the place she was one of the most dangerous fighters in the territory. That's something that she was made well aware of when she received a call from her father to come home for an urgent message. When she arrived, she found her father dying on the floor in a pool of blood with half of a giant pair of scissors stuck in his gut. After he died in her arms, Ryuko took the scissor as her weapon of choice and set out into the world, determined to find her father's killer and to never, under any circumstances, take an anger management course. So she went around the country, visiting high schools (because where else would you find a serial killer, I guess) and kicking the crap out of anyone who might know something about what happened – until she reached Hinnouji Academy, the place her father originally planned for her to go. Hinnouji was a mountain-built school that, when threatened by her classic crap-kicking, promptly kicked her crap back.

That fact was mostly due to Hinnouji Academy's specialty clubs. See, other schools might have a champion chess club, or a good law program, but in Hinnouji Academy, the school's specialty was Goku Uniforms. These outfits were uniforms especially made using Life Fibers, living pieces of alien threads that naturally accelerate evolution and grant incredible powers. The better you did at school, the better Goku Uniform you would receive, and the more influence and riches you and your family would have. Everyone was after these things – which wasn't surprising when you realize that a one-star uniform (the weakest tier) can allow a normal kid to move at over 3,000 MPH and bounce weaker bullets off of their chests, and every star is leagues above the previous one. Ryuko, in particular, got the crap kicked out of her by a two-star uniform-wearing boxer. After surviving a dozen punches from gloves stronger than steel, she retreated back to her father's house – where she found something that she'd somehow never gotten wind of before. A Kamui.

Kamuis are extremely dangerous and powerful Goku Uniforms. Now, a one-star Goku Uniform grants incredible powers and is made 10% out of Life Fibers. A two-star is made with 20% Life Fibers, and a three-star is made with 30% Life Fibers – and each level is far beyond the previous one. A Kamui is – get ready for this - made entirely, 100%, out of Life Fibers. Needless to say, they're pretty darn powerful. This Kamui was named Senketsu, and was made specifically for Ryuko to wear. And when she does wear it and activate it via her blood, she goes from powerful to unstoppable. When she returned to Hinnouji, that boxer dude hit her with his most powerful attack – and watched his harder-than-steel gloves shatter against her body while she herself wasn't moved an inch. She was finally powerful enough to get all the answers she needed – or not, since Satsuki Kiriyuin, the Student Council President, ruler of the whole place, and daughter of the most powerful force in the known world, Ragyo Kiriyuin, had a Kamui, too, named Junketsu.

Believing Satsuki to know something about her father's death, Ryuko challenged her to a fight, which…didn't end too well for her. Eventually, Satsuki agreed to tell her everything she knew under one condition: that every high-ranking school member would be out for her head, and only after she defeated everyone who challenged her every day, all day, would they fight once more – and then, if Ryuko won that last duel, Satsuki would tell her. Being a stubborn, boneheaded idiot who's just way too badass for her own good, Ryuko agreed – quite forcefully. And so her daily quest for answers began.

Whew, wasn't that a stupidly long and overcomplicated origin story? And I left out a lot of it! How they covered all this and a lot more in, like, three episodes is beyond me. But now we get to the good stuff. Wearing Senketsu, Ryuko is fast enough to leave 56 afterimages in her wake, tough enough to easily survive point-blank missiles, and strong enough to punch Satsuki so hard, the shockwave pounded a 14-foot crater into the wall behind her! Hey, her willpower alone can create concussive blasts that can literally knock dozens of people off of their feet, she can jump over two hundred feet into the air, and her pain tolerance is insanely high – one time, her mind got all wrapped up in Life Fibers, allowing Ragyo to control her like a puppet. In order to avoid this, she punched through her own skull and dug the Life Fibers out of her brain, severing them and breaking free! Not only did she survive doing this, she even fought an entire battle afterward! How much more hardcore can you get?!

" _Jumping into the jaws of death again, huh?" Aikuro asks rhetorically, seeming mildly interested._

 _Ryuko clenches her teeth angrily and glares at him. "Yeah, but this time, I'm heading straight down its throat and ripping its guts out with my teeth!"_

It gets even better. See, being made entirely of Life Fibers, Senketsu is actually alive and can speak to Ryuko through her thoughts. He can also do awesome things like regenerate, shapeshift, and absorb other Life Fibers, becoming more powerful the more people Ryuko defeats. And she's defeated a lot of them – though she initially struggled to do so due to blood loss. Understand, now, Kamuis gain power by drinking their host's blood, and that truly wearing a Kamui requires essentially becoming one with it, allowing it to wear you as much as you wear it. Basically, the more skin you show, the less energy it drains. Ryuko originally inhibited the power out of embarrassment and often could only go around five minutes before passing out, but after getting over that embarrassment and allowing herself to unlock its full power, she got way stronger, and can last for hours in a fight. And that Life Thread-absorption power goes great with her chosen weapon, the Scissor Blade.

The Scissor Blade is the very blade she found stuck in her father when this all started. Originally made as half of a giant pair of scissors, it was created specifically to cut through Life Fibers, and so can destroy a Goku Uniform with just one well-placed slash. Regardless of that ability, though, it's still very powerful when put up against other things. Not only is it six feet long, virtually unbreakable, can shorten to the size of a normal pair of scissors or extend to be eleven feet long, and can somehow create massive explosions, but it can unleash a colored, though difficult to see, sword beam that can annihilate a city street. Plus, it gets more powerful the more Life Fibers the wielder uses, so it's become pretty overpowered over time – to the point where its sword beams can effortlessly cut through _skyscrapers_ over two miles away! And what's better than one Scissor Blade? Two! After finding and defeating Nui, her father's killer, she reclaimed the other blade, and can utilize both in combat, though, for some reason, she still generally sticks to one, even though she's way better with two.

Well, at least we've got a good sense of what she can accomplish with just one, which is to say a whole lot. During her first clash with Satsuki, a single collision between the two created a 200-foot crater and a 1,500 foot shockwave! She defeated three members of the Elite Four (who are basically the supersoldiers of the supersoldiers of supersoldiers) in a row, survived a 15,000 foot fall with no negative effects, and remember that boxer guy she fought, Takaharu? Let's go slightly more into that: when Takaharu unleashed his two-star gloves' full unrestrained power, he hit Ryuko with all his might – and watched the glove shatter upon impact while she stood unaffected. The strongest known steel is Special Treatment Steel, commonly used on the hull of ships. According to Anthole James Murray's Book "Strength of Ships," it has a shearing strength of 104,000 psi. By measuring the length of the longest break, it's easy to determine that the amount of force needed to shatter this thing like that is _at least_ 43,612 tons. And to Ryuko, that's a plastic fork against a metal door! But she's far tougher than that - during a fight with three-star Uzu, whose seventh sense was powerful enough to track things _in outer space_ , she took on an enormous barrage of iron-based ballista attacks. Since this guy could effortlessly keep up with her while she was moving at 43,000 MPH earlier in the fight, we'll take that as a minimum end speed and assume she's being hit around 20 times a second here. With all those hits combined, she would have undergone a total force of well over 35,000,000 Tons of Force – and she still beat him! She's defeated over a hundred one-stars _at once_ , taken out twenty-seven COVERs (basically living Goku Uniforms) with one slice, and held back an attack that annihilated a grandstand the size of a city block just from its windshears! She's strong enough to effortlessly shatter gold chains, kick three people 2.4 miles into the air, and grab a 20-ton flute missile out of the sky and launch it back at the Goku Uniform from whence it came. In the same fight, she outright grabbed a Senketsu-made unbreakable rope attached to the transformed airship, spun the ship around and around through the air, and tossed it over a hundred feet away! This uniform had been filled with a huge amount of instruments, most of them brass. By estimating its size compared to Ryuko and assuming a 70% hollow interior due to how little surface area brass instruments actually have, this ship that she threw around so easily would weigh in at over 2,500,000 TONS!

And her speed is equally impressive. She sliced through 140 tennis balls five times each before anybody noticed, landed several hits on a three-star whose Goku Uniform's whole power was literally to predict and counter its opponent's moves, ran in a circle fast enough to whip up a tornado, and moved fast enough to appear to be in 25 places at the same time to what was basically a living computer. Judging from how this computerized Goku Uniform judged other speeds, she was likely moving as fast as Mach 157 here! And, when at full power with her and Senketsu in perfect sync, she's even tagged and landed blows on fighters that can react to light-speed attacks! Well, it's unlikely she's moving faster than light herself, but her unpredictability and surprise bursts in speed can make it seem that way to her opponents. She has herself survived light-speed attacks, and being hit hard enough into the ground to form a 160-foot crater. She even took on a four-hour beating from a two-star whose Goku Uniform specialized in fighting, meaning it was able to, in places, match a three-star uniform. At the end of the beating, the wearer punched the ground hard enough to form a massive crater - measuring directly from a family running down the side, the crater looks to be around the same size as the well-known Sedan Crater, which was made with a 104 kiloton explosion! And Ryuko was right next to this blast and was totally fine! Heck, she took on a blast from eight flute-shaped SAM-styled missiles at once, which, added up, could have had as high a total yield as 144 kilotons of TNT! And that's all without accounting for her regenerative abilities.

Right. So, long story short (seriously, it got more complicated) Ryuko's mother is actually Ragyo Kiriyuin, who infused her with Life Threads, thought she died, and threw her out like garbage. When Ragyo's husband faked his own death, he took the name Isshin Matoi and his daughter and moved, making all sorts of inventions (including the Scissor Blades and Senketsu) and raising his daughter to know nothing of her true past. So, yes, as it turns out, Ryuko and Satsuki are sisters – literal sibling rivals. And Ragyo is totally evil, but we'll get back to that. The point is, because she had Life Threads infused into her from the day she was born, Ryuko has an incredible healing factor – allowing her to survive some pretty insane stuff. She's survived being impaled with a spike through the throat, being stabbed seven times in the stomach, having her heart ripped out (although she had to put it back in), and even being sliced clean in half! Oh, and once, Junketsu was literally sewed into her body, attaching her entire outer body to the Kamui. After being saved from mind control, she just…tore it completely off, along with her whole outer body, and, thanks to that healing factor, she still survived! What the heck?! And keep in mind that, thanks to Senketsu, her skin is already super resistant to slicing and piercing weapons – the majority just break when they hit her, including bullets! However, it's important to note that this healing factor can be nullified by her Life Threads being cut on both sides at the same time, she can be killed if her heart is both removed and crushed, and the healing factor doesn't protect from physical blows or explosions, just things like cutting, impaling, slicing, piercing, ripping, and that kind of stuff. Still, she is durable enough when it comes to explosions and blunt force to be basically missile-proof, survive a fall from outer space, and even survive a 218 kiloton explosion that obliterated a giant iron tower. Most impressive of all is the time Satsuki tried to kill Ragyo (who also had that healing factor) and she responded by creating an explosion that leveled the entire central hub of Hinnouji Academy. By judging the size of the blast and the wreckage afterward and comparing it to real-life bomb tests, this blast should be equivalent to around 621 kilotons of TNT – and Ryuko was in the center of it! Though, to be fair, it did knock her out for a month afterwards. And all of this is without accounting for her transformations.

Okay, so you know how Senketsu is alive and capable of shapeshifting? And remember how he gains more power the more Life Threads he's absorbed? Well, after absorbing dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the things, his abilities by themselves have grown to be pretty powerful. He can latch into the ground, transform into a 350-foot kite sheet, turn to strips of paper, and create rope-like strands that Ryuko can use in games of Skyscraper Pong or to wield the Scissor Blade like a flail. In fact, Ryuko's control over that shapeshifting is something to behold: once, after taking on a light-speed sound-based attack that vibrated her Life Fibers and could potentially destroy them, she vibrated herself in such a way as to become a living tuning fork, transforming the sound frequencies into one pure sound – which she was then able to manipulate and send back at her attacker. What. The. Heck. However, we've yet to cover Senketsu's strongest power – the power of transformation. After eating up all of those Life Threads, he's gained access to a couple of different "Super Modes" for Ryuko – so let's get to them.

First up is Senketsu Senjin, a transformation that stuffs her outfit full of blades. Said blades are harder and sharper than any normal metal could possibly be, can extend to be several feet long, and can match evenly against Scissor Blades. She can use these blades to gain Wolverine-esque claws, transform her skirt into a buzzsaw, or perform a classic Sonic-style Spin Attack. The form also increases her strength by a fair amount – though it's difficult to quantify. It's clearly enhanced, but not to a degree of instantly achieving things that were impossible beforehand. A 50% increase is about as good an estimate as we're ever going to get. Next is Senketsu Shippu, which, thankfully, is a lot easier to calculate and quantify. This transformation transforms her skirt into jet engines. In this form, she can fly around effortlessly and it comes with a boost in speed – she's able to dodge armies of laser fire and, during a battle against Ragyo (again, we'll get to her) she flew from an area that appears to be similar to the Karmen Line in height all the way to the ground in (accounting for slow-motion by measuring other slow-motion instances frame-by-frame in other scenes) 0.65 seconds – that's around 350,000 MPH! And her third transformation is better than either of those – because it's both. Senjin Shippu gives her all the powers and upgrades of both previous transformations, and she can last for hours in it.

But none of these compare to her ultimate form. Okay, so now we get to Ragyo. Remember how Life Threads are alien in nature? Well, here's where it gets complicated. See, Life Threads are an alien force that wanders throughout the universe, finds primitive life, and forces it to wear it as clothing, forcefully evolving it far more quickly than it would normally. It does this because organic life forms with higher brain functions are basically food for Life Fibers due to the electrolytes in their blood and brains. No, it doesn't make sense. Anyway, then it goes dormant on said planet until something wakes it up when the species has evolved to the point of easily being able to feed it. Then the Primordial Life Fiber, which was what originally came to the planet, picks a host to wield its powers and covers the entire planet, sucking it dry of energy and then turning into hundreds of other Primordial Life Fibers to do it all over again. Anyway, since Ragyo was the one who woke the thing up, she was chosen as the host, and spent the next twenty years secretly preparing the Earth to be a good meal for the Primordial Life Fiber. However, knowing this, Isshin made Senketsu specifically for Ryuko (as she had an abnormal tolerance for Life Fibers and happened to be made out of them) to stop Ragyo Kiriyuin's plans of sacrificing the world to Life Fibers (which still makes no sense as to why she'd want to, but whatever).

So, after fighting against her and Nui several times alongside Satsuki, freeing the entire population of Japan, and (alongside a giant ship that turned into a giant Life Thread-cutting knife) killing the Primordial Life Fiber, everything seemed good – until Ragyo transformed the Primordial Life Fiber into a Kamui that she wore and proceeded with the plan anyway. In order to stop her, Ryuko transformed one last time. After absorbing the Life Fibers of every Goku Uniform and Kamui left on the planet, Ryuko and Senketsu became Senketsu Kisaragi, one with both human and clothing. In this red and gold and glowing form, she rocketed out into outer space (achieving speeds of over 24,600,000 MPH) and, wielding all this power and both Scissor Blades, fought and defeated Ragyo. In this ultimate form her stats were magnified to incredible amounts, dodging light speed blows and punching through satellites, and she was capable of regenerating from stabbing wounds instantly. And, through Life Thread manipulation, she saved the entire planet, destroying every Life Thread ever made with just a shout. Unfortunately, doing all this was just too much for Senketsu, who, after helping her survive going through the atmosphere, burned in her arms. Ryuko was alone again – but she'd saved the whole world for it.

Now, Ryuko is insanely powerful, but not unbeatable. Senketsu can be killed if all five of his Banshi (basically central Life Fibers) are cut, though it's very unlikely for that to happen. Far greater weaknesses are that her lack of training leaves her unprepared for the unexpected, she's always going up against people she can't defeat, she's surprisingly susceptible to mind control for someone with so much willpower, she's often overwhelmed by faster opponents, and, most of all, she gets way too angry for her own good. She'll let anger rule everything she does if she gets even slightly ticked off, and it's always a challenge for Senketsu, or anyone else, for that matter, to get her to cool off and think straight. One time, she was even swallowed up by her own anger and transformed into a hideous monster until she calmed down again.

But, I mean, come on. When you can make explosions that level stadiums, destroy entire cities in battle, survive the vacuum of space (and falling from it), and defeat forty trained warriors who can each move over 3,000 MPH in just four seconds without any help at all, who cares if someone can rile you up a little easily?

I say, if anybody wants to piss off Ryuko, they deserve every painful thing coming their way.

 _After battling for several minutes against her rival,_ _Satsuki, Ryuko falls to her knees on the ground, exhausted. Satsuki pants and gasps in air from overexertion, but stands triumphantly, assuming victory._

 _One eye half-closed in pain, Ryuko lifts up her head to stare Satsuki in the eyes. "I'm gonna smash all of them."_

 _Satsuki breathes heavily and angrily demands "All of what?"_

" _All that crap you've been talking about 'ambition this' and 'aspirations that,'" Ryuko replies, grinding her teeth. "I'm gonna take them all, smash every last one of them, and shove your goddamn face in it! And then you'll be begging to tell me what I want to know!"_

 **Ryuko:**

Name: Ryuko Matoi

Species: Neither Human nor Clothing, yet both Human and Clothing

Height: 5'3"/160 cm

Weight: 117 lb/53 kg

Age: 17

Occupation: Student

Best Friend: Mako Mankanshoku

Hates classical music

Owns three motorcycles

DON'T LOSE YOUR WAAAAY

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Senses

Superhuman Pain Tolerance

Can breathe without oxygen

Healing Factor

Willpower creates concussive blasts

 **Arsenal:**

Scissor Blade

~Virtually unbreakable

~Sharp enough to slice right through almost anything

~Uniquely designed to slice through Life Fibers

~Can shrink to the size of a normal pair of scissors or extend to reach over eleven feet long

~Can create colored sword beams

~Gains more power from Life Threads

Other Scissor Blade

~All the same stuff

Senketsu

~Regeneration

~Shapeshifting

~Sentience

~Made out of Life Fibers

~Transformations:

 _Senketsu Senjin_

 _Senketsu Shippu_

 _Senjin Shippu_

 _Senketsu Kisaragi_

 **Feats:**

Sliced 140 tennis balls five times before anyone could react

Caught a tennis ball that left 15 afterimages

Moved fast enough to leave 56 afterimages

Speed outmatched a prediction machine

Appeared in 25 places at once to basically a living computer

Fast enough to hit Nui, who can easily react to the relativistic Uzu

Chopped off Nui's arms

Effortlessly shatter steel

Matched the strength of Takaharu's full-powered punch

Punched Satsuki in the face hard enough to make a 14-foot crater in the wall behind her

Kicked three people 2.4 miles into the air

Easily shattered gold chains

Grabbed a 20 ton missile out of the air and threw it at speeds of around Mach 2

Threw a 2,509,038 Ton airship

In a battle against Nui, the two leveled a mountaintop

Completely took on over three hundred of those stronger-than-steel boxing glove punches

Can smash right through materials tougher than titanium without effort

Took a 43,612 Ton punch without it affecting her

Survived several blows from Satsuki worth around 175 Tons of TNT

Survived being hit into the ground hard enough to create a 160-foot diameter crater

Takes point-blank RPG missiles all the time without being hurt

Took eight massive flute missiles point-blank

Tanked hundreds of hits from three-star Uzu with giant steel ballistas

Took on a four-hour beating from Mako

Survived the vacuum of space

Survived a 104 kiloton explosion

Survived a 218 kiloton explosion

Survived a 621 kiloton explosion, was knocked out

Survived a 15,000 ft fall

Survived a fall from space that leveled a skyscraper

Survived having her heart ripped out

Survived tearing off Junketsu after it was sewn into her skin - effectively ripping off her entire outer body

Survived impalement from a spike through the neck

Survived being sliced in half

Was impaled by seven Life Fiber spears at the same time, shrugged it off

Jumped 214 feet high

Dug a three-mile hole in about five seconds

Smashed into her own head to break some life fibers – then fought an entire battle afterward

Destroyed a street with a slash

Destroyed two skyscrapers with a sword beam

Destroyed hundreds of Goku Uniforms

Took on thousands of life-fiber-draining needles before even starting to feel the effects

Held back an attack that annihilated a grandstand the size of a city block with windshear alone

Knocked over dozens of spectators with willpower alone

A collision with Satsuki created a 1,500 ft shockwave and a 200 ft crater

Knocked out six one-star students in less than three seconds without Senketsu

Made it through a city-sized obstacle course with 999 deadly traps while carrying around two kids without Senketsu

Defeated three two-star Goku Uniforms in only 30 seconds

Founded Honnouji Academy's Fight Club

Defeated nearly 100 one-star combatants at once

Reverberated a soundwave to knock out a three-star

Defeated three of the Elite Four in a row

Defeated 40 one-stars in four seconds – three times

In battles against Satsuki, entire cities will fall

Dueled Satsuki to a draw without Scissor Blade

Destroyed twenty-seven COVERS with one slice

Helped a city-sized knife kill the Primordial Life Fiber

Defeated Ragyo after she had absorbed the Primordial Life Fiber  
Defeated a giant living school mech W/O Senketsu

Briefly matched a Satsuki clone W/O Senketsu

 **Weaknesses:**

Easily agitated

Extremely impatient

Always getting into fights, even ones she probably can't win

Hasn't really trained much, only gets by through being angry

Passes out really frequently

Struggles a lot against opponents who are faster than her

Defeated by Nui, who ripped Senketsu to pieces and knocked her out with one blow

Banshi are central fibers – if all five of Senketsu's are cut through, he will fall

Surprisingly susceptible to Mind Control – and it's crazy hard to snap her out of it

…

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all. It's time for a Death Battle!

…

Shadow woke up with no memories.

Again. 

Well, actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration. He had plenty of memories. He just didn't quite remember how he arrived at this place at this time – or where that place was, when this was, or what he was doing here.

He groaned as he got up and rubbed his forehead. Chaos Energy radiated around him – he apparently had plenty of weapons and items inside his Air Chaos patch, including all seven Chaos Emeralds. What on earth he needed those for, he didn't know.

He reached out with his chaos powers to sense the area around him. Something was…a bit off. He was clearly still on some version of Earth, but there was an energy in the air, an aura of unnatural power that permeated the land. It was as if the whole planet was waiting to be…swallowed up.

Time to figure that out later. He needed his memories back. And the only man with enough skill to do it was…

Shadow sighed.

It was time to visit Eggman again. And time to hope that he wouldn't put him under mind control again.

…

Ryuko sliced through another COVER with ease, looked around the forest she was in, and sighed. "Damn things popping up everywhere. I just wish that Rag chick would show up already so I could split her skull in half!"

"Ryuko," Senketsu replied calmly. "The work you are doing is important."

"Like hell it is!" Ryuko shouted back. "All these guys would be out of here at once if only-"

She was stopped mid-sentence when the sky suddenly went dark. In less than three seconds, what appeared to be a rift opened up in the clouds, something fell from it, and the rift closed right away. "Uh, Senketsu? What the hell?"

"I don't know, Ryuko. We should check it out. But be careful – if it's a ploy by Ragyo Kiriyuin, we could be walking right into a trap."

"Yeah, well," Ryuko replied while shortening her Scissor Blade, "if we do walk into it, we'll be walking out of it soon enough." She made her way towards where the object appeared to have crashed, but hadn't made it ten feet before noticing a black blur racing from that area and, apparently, intending to move right past her. She quickly extended her blade again.

"Hey, hold up!" Ryuko let out a sword beam that sliced through several trees and almost hit the balck ball – and would have if he hadn't stopped right before it went sailing past him. "Yeah, you! Where'd you come from and what are you doing here?"

"I thought I advised you to be careful," Senketsu reminded her.

"I didn't run in and try to kill it, did I? That's plenty careful." Then, to Shadow, "Well, what're you waiting for?!"

Shadow hesitated, not knowing this girl in any way, and his years of combat experience quickly let him know that she was a warrior – and a very confident one, too. Could this be a trap? Perhaps. But, then, the alternative was travelling the entire planet to attempt to find the Doctor. He calmly slid along the ground towards her and stopped just five feet short of this girl. "I'm looking for a certain Doctor Eggman. Do you know where he could be located?"

Ryuko snorted. "Eggman? What idiot came up with that name?"

"He has taken many names over the years – perhaps you know him as Doctor Robotnik?"

"Never heard of him."

"Hmm." Shadow got ready to run off again before another thought popped into his mind. "Maybe I could describe him to you. Middle-aged, pointy nose, very fat, bushy red-haired mustache, skilled in the arts of inventing and brainwashing?"

Ryuko was taken aback more at each item he described – minus the "fat" part, that sounded exactly like her father. He even commonly changed his name to avoid suspicion. "Where- where did you come from?"

"I don't know, exactly, yet. I likely ran into an issue with the art of Chaos Control. I could be in the future, the past, an entirely different dimension. I am hoping to find this…ahem, scientist in order to help regain my memories."

"Yeah," Ryuko replied, somehow both angrily and half-heartedly, "well, you're too late. I know the guy you're talking about, and somebody killed him."

Shadow turned to her, surprised. "Really? Despite all of his defenses?" He turned around. "Hmph. Well, I suppose I can't exactly blame them."

Ryuko's head snapped up. "What do you mean?" she snarled.

"Ryuko!" Senketsu warned. Ryuko didn't listen.

"Well," Shadow continued, "I knew him well for a time, and he certainly wasn't well-loved. Not that I'm surprised. Even his own creations hated him. It's hard to like somebody who has enslaved you and constantly fails at everything he does."

Ryuko clenched both her teeth and her grip on the Scissor Blade. "How dare-"

"All those inventions, every single thing he ever made, and none of it could save him."

Ryuko loosened her grip slightly. "You…you…"

"Hmm?" Shadow turned back to face her uncaringly.

Ryuko leapt into the air in a surprise move that gave Shadow almost no time to react. She swung the Scissor Blade down at him. "YOU PIECE OF SHIT! THAT'S MY FATHER!"

Shadow instinctively flipped out of the way. "What- he had a child?!"

Ryuko landed in front of him. "You think you're so smart, that you know everything about him. But he DID make something that works. And now it's gonna kick your ass!" She pulled on a string on a gauntlet resting on her left hand. "Life Fiber: Synchronize!" A burst of sparkles covered her, and with a shout of "Kamui Senketsu!" they were dispelled.

The dispelled sparkles revealed Ryuko in an outfit with what appeared to be extended shoulder braces…with eyes. Her hair was stuck straight up and spiked, a very short skirt, and…little else. However, Shadow did read the abundance of power she had just gained, making her significantly more powerful than he had predicted. Still, he was could likely handle this. Probably. He considered, for a moment, using the Chaos Emeralds right away. No – he didn't use a semi-truck to squash a fly. He readied himself and smirked. "Very well." His eyes glinted dangerously. "Prove it."

 **-FIGHT!-**

Ryuko charged ahead as Shadow backflipped over her head. He threw out dozens of chaos arrows towards Ryuko's back, but was surprised to see all of them bounce right off of her skin. She whirled around. "Ow! What the hell?!"

Shadow sent a dozen chaos spears, each of which was significantly more powerful than the previous batch of arrows, but Ryuko slashed her blade at them, unleashing a colored sword beam that knocked all of them out of the air. They fell onto the ground and created a series of explosions that kicked up dust into the air, and through that dust, Ryuko burst in with a wide swing that nicked Shadow on the side. Shadow vanished, teleporting behind Ryuko and pulling out a machine gun. He shot out hundreds of rounds into Ryuko – but each one just bounced off her skin.

"Nice try, but you can't stop me now!" Ryuko shouted, a concussive blast bursting out from her body and knocking Shadow off of his feet. She was on top of him in an instant and kicked him into the air before rushing through with a flurry of slices. Shadow wasn't there to take them, though – he'd turned into a laser and dashed out of the way right before her first one could land. He turned back to her.

"You may be tough, but even you have your limits." He pulled out an RPG and shot out all eight missiles at her at once. Ryuko turned and rushed ahead – and each missile was sliced neatly into four pieces without any visible action. Each one still exploded, but she remained completely undamaged as she struck Shadow, inflicting first blood. The blade didn't pierce his skin, but the impact left him gasping and coughing up the slightest bit of blood. He backed off, wiped his mouth, and smiled. "Your strongest blows can't damage me."

"Then I'll just have to swing harder!"

Shadow pulled out the Shadow Rifle and shot at her several times. Ryuko threw at sword beam at them, but it dissipated upon coming in contact with the energy bullets. Ryuko quickly slashed at them, but they phased right through her Scissor Blade. "Senketsu!"

"Got it!" Senketsu formed a spiked shield in front of her where the bullets all hit and finally vanished. "Ryuko, that was a strong blast."

"This guy can pull weapons right out of the air. Not to mention the look. What kind of a Goku Uniform is that?"

"That's no Goku Uniform," Senketsu replied.

"Huh?"

"I sense no presence of Life Fibers in that body. He has been genetically altered, and gains power from some other source. Other than that, I cannot ascertain the extent of his abilities."

"Hmph. Well, I'll give you plenty to ascertain! Let's see what this guy is capable of!"

"Be careful, Ryuko. He is still very powerful."

"Who needs power when you're pissed off?!" She flew at Shadow, Scissor Blade held out to her left.

Shadow shot his rifle at her constantly until it ran out of ammo, most shots piercing her skin and going right through it, but Ryuko didn't even slow down until she reached Shadow. She swung the blade at Shadow as he curled up into a Spin Attack and rammed the blade. He bounced off of the blade and uncurled himself, feeling a deep cut in one of his spines. Blood trickled down his head before the wound slowly began to close itself. As he watched, every hole in Ryuko's skin healed over itself rapidly. Shadow grimaced and pulled out the Satellite Gun and pointed it at Ryuko. He pulled the trigger…and nothing happened. Shadow didn't even get a chance to puzzle over this before the gun was sliced into pieces. He teleported behind her and rammed her with a Spin Attack. Ryuko seemingly sensed this attack and flipped over the dash. She threw the Scissor Blade at Shadow, then caught it mid-air with a rope coming out of Senketsu. As Shadow teleported above her, hovered, and threw projectiles, she whirled the blade around, catching and deflecting every one before launching it up to pierce through him. Shadow teleported out of the way and right under her and delivered a mighty uppercut into her chin. Ryuko was hurled backwards and crashed onto her back. Ryuko pulled herself up, a trail of blood leaking from her mouth down her chin.

"Not bad, lab rat. But I'm not done yet." She grinned and unleashed a flurry of sword beams – not at Shadow, but at the ground, creating explosions that rocked the terrain and forced Shadow to leap into the air – and from the smoke came Ryuko with a shout of "Senjin Shippu!" Her skirt now covered her legs and feet completely and shot out jets of air that allowed her to fly. In addition, her entire outfit was filled with spikes, including lengthy claws on both hands coming from between her knuckles. "I've got you now!" Several spiked ropes launched from Senketsu and wrapped themselves around Shadow's limbs. Shadow was shocked for a moment before teleporting out of the restraints and right behind Ryuko – then promptly found the Scissor Blade impaled into his stomach from a lengthy spike protruding from the back of the shirt – the one this girl referred to as Senketsu. It had been waiting for him. The spike retreated, leaving the blade inside Shadow, who coughed up blood onto the blade's hilt.

Ryuko turned around, grinning. "Thanks, Senketsu." Then, to Shadow, she spoke again. "You left yourself wide open." She pulled out the Scissor Blade and quickly replaced it with one set of claws, which she then crushed around in his stomach before pulling out. The tips of the claws were gone, a fact Shadow noticed only briefly before red spikes impaled out from inside his body, stabbing through his chest and arms. Shadow forced them all out of his body with Chaos Upper, and heaved in pain. Not allowing him to rest for a moment, Ryuko punched him full force, sending him slamming into the ground hard enough to form a fifty-foot crater.

Shadow stood up, biting through the pain. "You have already taught me much. I should learn to not underestimate those I oppose. So, be grateful." A burst of energy surrounded his body, and when it vanished, he was glowing, his wounds healed, and effortlessly hovering above the ground. "For you will have the honor of being slain by my full power!"

"Full power, huh?" Ryuko set her eyes on him, baiting him at her. "Good. I'm just getting started!" She launched dozens of spikes at Shadow, who flew up through them at incredible speeds, almost instantaneously to Ryuko. He appeared behind her and held out an open palm to her head. "Kneel before the Ultimate Lifeform." A ball of pure chaos energy formed in his hand and hit Ryuko right in the skull, inflicted a cry of pain as a large portion of her head was ripped off. She flew backwards and let the wound heal completely. "I'll make you pay for that!" She curled into a buzzsaw and flew ahead at Shadow, who did the same. The two met in mid-air and matched spin attacks, the impact and continued energy creating lightning storm in the forest. The match ended when Shadow teleported behind Ryuko and stuck his hand right through her chest, reaching her heart and smashing it through the other side. Ryuko gasped.

"I told you," Shadow informed her, "I will no longer underestimate you."

Ryuko clamped down on her teeth, trying to block out the pain. "Senketsu, now!"

Clothing-based tendrils suddenly wrapped themselves around Shadow's hand, keeping it in place and preventing him from crushing her heart. Shadow was surprised for moment before the tendrils spread across his eyes and ears, blinding and deafening him. Shadow quickly struggled to get out without teleporting – he needed to take down this girl, now.

"Senketsu, focus on the beating of my heart," Ryuko whispered.

"I can hear it clearly. It reverberates throughout my body."

"Then send those vibrations back!"

Shadow felt his arms vibrate rapidly. He was losing his grip on her heart, and he couldn't move. Before he knew it, his entire arm was vibrating so fast, it passed right through Ryuko without harming her. Senketsu fell away from his body and he grasped his arm, steadying it. "Enough. Chaos…Control!"

Ryuko's wounds healed almost right away. She grinned and rushed forward, Scissor Blade in one hand, claws in the other, and almost reached him before he finished his words and time stopped moving.

Shadow used Chaos Upper to increase his strength and delivered dozens of powerful blows to Ryuko's body. He cast Chaos Lance and pierce through her skin, and Chaos Ball and wracked her still body with chaotic energy. When time moved once more, Ryuko felt the combined impact of every blow and every wound, throwing her back into the air, screaming in pain. She managed pull her herself together, though, and mumbled out "What the hell?"

"Ryuko," Senketsu told her, "I sense extreme vibration energy from the world around us. It almost feels like…it's trying to catch up with something."

"I don't get it. What happened?"

"I'm not certain, but I recommend a new-"

"New plan of attack, yeah. I think I got this one."

She dove down to the ground, using her claws to tunnel through the dirt with ease. Shadow flew down, attempting to sense the vibrations under the earth, when suddenly Ryuko burst out from underneath him. He sensed her coming, but wasn't prepared for her arms having transformed into a giant drill. She drove the rotating spiral of death into Shadow's stomach, but it simply stopped at his skin and didn't go any further.

"Such arrogance. A simpler lifeform like yourself couldn't possibly match up to me." Shadow used the Yellow Wisp to transform into a drill of his own – one that caused Ryuko's drill to crumble. Ryuko just barely flew up and out of the way in time.

"I sensed incredible energy expulsion from his body," Senketsu said. "He appears to be invulnerable to damage. I don't think he can keep up that form much longer, though."

"He might be invulnerable to damage, but let's see if he's invulnerable to pain!" Ryuko raced up into the sky, almost reaching outer space before rocketing back down through the atmosphere, delivering dozens of sword beams down at Shadow.

Shadow deftly dodged each and every one, and, when Ryuko was near enough, shouted "Chaos Control!" once again. Time froze, and he flew up above Ryuko and hit her back with a powerful kick. Time started again, and Ryuko found herself flying right into the ground before,  
Shadow not in sight, and landed hard enough to create a crater over hundred feet deep.

"I felt it again, the world's vibrations," Senketsu informed her.

"So, whenever he shouts those words, he appears somewhere else, I appear injured, and the world tries to catch up with what happened." Ryuko narrowed her eyes. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Of course."

Ryuko threw out several red spikes at Shadow, who flew down at great speeds, allowing the spikes to disintegrate when they touched his skin. "Chaos Control!" 

Time stopped again and he rammed into Ryuko, then curled into a ball to perform a spin attacks and struck her several times while time was stopped. He gathered himself behind her and, as time resumed, readied a Boost. Ryuko was hit by dozens of blows, causing her to spurt out blood even as she healed.

"So," Shadow acknowledged, "you can heal from piercing and slicing, but not blunt force. I know your weakness now. You can't hurt me. You can't even touch me." He burst ahead in the Boost.

Ryuko half-turned her head, smirking despite the blood pooling in her mouth. "No. But you can touch me. And that's all I need! Senketsu, now!" 

As he moved, Shadow felt himself suddenly wrapped up in clothing. He was getting awfully tired of this. The creature must have readied itself for the next blow, allowing him to have some kind of thread-like substance on top of Shadow even while stopped in time. Shadow squeezed against the clothing and attempted to teleport away – but found himself unable to. Even worse, something was happening. The straps around him were vibrating rapidly, and he felt his power draining. "What- what are you doing to me?!" 

"You don't get your power from Life Fibers, but you do get it from someplace else. All Senketsu needed was a little information to figure out how, and now he's sealing it away!"

"No…no…NO!" Shadow screamed out. "CHAOS BLAST!" A burst of fiery energy erupted from him, forcing off the portions of Senketsu previously attached to him. But his aura was gone – the power Senketsu had drained had rid him of his Chaos Boost abilities. Shadow tried to throw out a Chaos Spear, but found he didn't even have the power for that.

"Now it's time for ME to go all out!" Ryuko shouted. Her hand reached behind her skirt and pulled out another blade exactly like the first, but purple. Shadow saw this, paused to consider it, then turned around and fled for his life.

"Hey! You're not going to get away from ME so easily!" Ryuko used her skirt's jet engines to tear after him, the two matching speeds exactly as they zoomed across the planet.

Shadow kept going, kept moving, determined to not allow her to catch up to him – and smacked right into a massive orange ball that darkened the sky somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. He slammed against it, shrugged it off, and looked up at it. It had to be at least five hundred feet high. What the heck could it be? 

Ryuko entered in shortly after him and came to a halt as well. "Um, is that-"

"The Primordial Life Fiber."

"It's…it's huge!"

"And extremely dangerous. Do NOT go near it, Ryuko."

"Yeah, I hear you, loud and clear." She saw Shadow and made a satisfied "huh" noise. "Looks like it has a fly on the windshield. Let's clean that off."

Both her blades extended themselves, folding out to be over eleven feet long as Shadow kept backing up from the Primordial Life Fiber. "Decapitation Mode!" Then she rushed ahead with both. "Sen'i Soshitsu!"

Shadow sensed them coming at the last moment and dashed out of the way – but not quite fast enough. The leftmost blade caught his right arm – and sliced it right off. Shadow grimaced and held his bleeding stump of an arm. "That…hurt."

"Is that all you have to say?" Ryuko laughed. "So, what was that you were saying about my father? Now's your last chance to take it all back!"

Shadow kept his head down. "Thank you."

Ryuko lowered her swords. "Huh?"

"Thank you. For giving me…a chance." He jumped into the air, blood spurting everywhere. "A CHANCE TO MAKE ONE MORE MOVE!"

Seven multicolored gemstones suddenly appeared around him. Realizing her mistake, Ryuko leapt ahead and attempted to strike, but was forcefully knocked back by the aura of energy exuding from those gems – and now, from her opponent. "What the hell are you?!" 

The energy cleared – no, it didn't clear. It gathered. Gathered and became a golden, glowing form of the creature she had been facing, with had his arm completely restored. He spoke. "I am Shadow the Hedgehog, the ultimate lifeform. The beginning and the end. Guardian of the ARK, protector of those who cannot protect themselves, and destroyer of all who oppose me. This is who I am." He held a hand forward, moving his fingers in a snapping position. "Bow." He snapped his fingers, and Ryuko suddenly experienced excruciating pain.

She collapsed in mid-air. It felt like this power that he'd been given was pulling at every fiber of her being - literally. Every molecule wanted desperately to scatter and reduce her to dust as a result – the only thing that seemed to stop it was Senketsu, who was working overtime synchronizing with her body to keep it all together.

Super Shadow gave them a pity laugh. "Your attempts are meaningless." He snapped his fingers and both of Ryuko's Scissor Blades were blasted out of her hands and fell into the water below. "You want to know the extent of my power now? How outclassed you truly are when compared to the ultimate lifeform?" He raised a massive ball of chaos energy in his hands and hurled it into the Primordial Life Fiber. There was a second of delay, and then a massive explosion as the giant orange behemoth was shredded into thousands of pieces spread across the water's surface. He snapped his fingers again, and Ryuko screamed in pain. Her Senjin Shippu form retreated and she fell hundreds of feet to the ocean below. Luckily, Senketsu managed to make a sort of kite raft beneath her before she hit the water, preventing her from drowning.

Super Shadow rose up. "This is no longer about your father. You flew too close to the sun and got burned. No it's my duty to incinerate what's left." He began flying further up, clearly intending to go into space. "So feel free to pray to your gods, but I doubt I'll be listening." He flew all the way into space.

Ryuko coughed. "Senketsu?"

"He's too powerful, Ryuko. Far more than us."

"How many Life Fibers can you absorb?" 

"…"

"Senketsu, come on! He's going to kill us!"

"I…it's dangerous. I don't know what would happen if I were to absorb all that is around us. It could destroy me." 

"We're about to be destroyed anyway. Besides," she got up on her knees, "I don't like how he talked about us like we just don't matter. I say it's time we showed that freak the real power of the bond between humans and clothing!"

Senketsu felt his heart leap at such a prospect. "I'll… I'll try."

Super Shadow was up, far above the atmosphere, readying a devastating blast at the planet below, when something shot up from the Earth and caught his attention. He focused in on it and found, to his surprise, that the girl now held a form very much like his own, and was looking up at him above the atmosphere.

"You wanna know who I am?"

"Please, enlighten me."

"I'm Ryuko Matoi. I'm just a little girl with a big grudge, but me and Senketsu have gone through hell, killed everything, and come back. So a god sounds like a fun challenge today." She held out both Scissor Blades to each side. "I'm the bitch who's going to kick your ass and rip that regret out of your throat with my teeth! THIS IS WHO I AM!" She raced up towards him, flying across the starry sky.

Super Shadow launched his charged attack at her, but she tanked it head-first and looked as if she barely felt it. He began pelting her with Chaos Lances, but each one just bounced off her body.

Ryuko clamped her swords together, a screw appearing out of nowhere and transforming them into a massive pair of scissors, which she then extended to be nearly thirty feet long. She opened them up and, the moment Super Shadow was in range, she closed them. Super Shadow grabbed each blade with open palms and struggled to hold them off. The two superbeings contested their full strength, and slowly the Rending Scissors began to cut into Super Shadow's hands. Super Shadow teleported out of them and several hundred yards above Ryuko. He took off his inhibitor rings, unrestraining his full power. He held his hands out in front of him. "CHAOS…"

Ryuko unhinged her scissors. "Senketsu, you still have that vibration pattern down?"

"Indeed."

"Then let's put it to good use!" She shot out, flying at nearly light-speeds at Super Shadow. 

Super Shadow launched his kamehameha. "BLAST!"

Ryuko didn't move. She let the blast hit her, and began vibrating.

Super Shadow poured even more power into the attack.

Ryuko became a living tuning fork, translating the chaotic force into simple kinetic energy, which she physically absorbed. She flew right through the beam, with no debilitating effects.

Super Shadow put all of the energy he could possibly muster into the blast, but Ryuko just ran right through it, and then, when she reached the end, flew not a foot above Super Shadow.

And sent it all back at him.

Super Shadow was engulfed in the kinetic energy of the force he had unleashed. He shouted in agony as he was tossed miles away. And without his inhibitor rings, the moment the blast stopped, his golden form faded, leaving normal Shadow where it once was.

Ryuko flew at him, ready to strike, still in her super form.

Shadow woke up.

He looked everywhere blankly. "Wha- where am I? WHO am I?" He looked to Ryuko, who had stopped short. "Who are you?!"

"He's…lost his memory," Senketsu noted.

"Then it's our last good opportunity! Senketsu, put your all into this! When everything's clear I don't want a trace of him left!"

"Understood!"

Ryuko held back both Scissor Blades and extended them. "Decaptation Mode: Sen'i Soshitsu!" She zoomed ahead at an unexpecting Shadow. "Sayonara, Shadow the Hedghog!" With that, she burst past him with a mighty swing of her arms, forming an explosion greater than she ever had before. And, when the smoke cleared, there was no Shadow the Hedgehog. Not anymore.

"Whew," she breathed out. The golden form of Senketsu Kisaragi slowly faded away.

"I can't keep up that much energy," Sneketsu informed her. "I can't even sync with you right now. The most I can do is keep you alive until I regain my strength."

"That's okay, Senketsu," Ryuko replied. "We… we won."

Then she saw a blade pierce through her heart.

Shadow held the Samurai Blade in one hand. "I don't know why you wanted to kill me, but thank goodness I remembered Air Chaos in time. I probably wouldn't have survived that attack." He waved his hand, and a monstrous portal opened in the middle of space, leading to what looked lick nothing but black. "Now, you will never threaten anybody again."

"Wha- No. You can't…Senketsu-"

Shadow threw her into the Chaos Rift, and was assaulted with her screams as both Ryuko and Senketsu were torn apart and disintegrated on an atomic level.

 **-KO!-  
**

Shadow closed the portal and wiped his hands. That had taken quite a bit of power. He viewed the Earth below him. Now, he needed to figure out how he had gotten himself into this mess to start with.

…

I don't think he'll forget that anytime soon.

This fight was close – at least initially. Finding areas where they took advantages in was easy, but putting said areas against each other was not. Let's go by this step-by-step, starting with the classics, Strength, Speed, and Durability. Oh, wait a moment. Before we start, let me just clarify that while Ragyo was able to use Life Fibers to manipulate and control minds, no other character (certainly not Ryuko) has shown this ability, so she couldn't use this as a way to win. Anyway, in terms of strength, both could smash right through metals far stronger than steel and titanium without even trying and had plenty of exceptionally strong feats that matched up fairly well and one that was above the others to a degree where we can get a good pinpoint on their maximum. That one was, of course, Shadow's outmatching that 1.9 Million Ton monster and Ryuko tossing around that 2.5 Million Ton Goku Uniform. Ryuko's feat may seem more impressive at first glance, but remember that she was just spinning around some weight. Shadow was outright matching and surpassing _the strength_ of the 1.9 Million Ton beast, so his actual number should be far higher. But then we'll also take into account the ease with which Ryuko did her swinging, and the force to get it to spin out a hundred feet away, and then we have to match the 89% strength boost for Shadow with his equipment against that _and_ Senketsu Senjin's 50% strength boost and…long story short, both end up being very difficult to quantify, but end up at around the same level. With their strength matched, they had to rely on other advantages.

Shadow certainly took the Speed category – he could race around at 350,000 MPH and dodge light-speed attacks in base form, while Ryuko needed to be in Senketsu Shippu or Senjin Shippu to match those speeds – and Shadow gets another speed boost with Hero Shadow and Chaos Boost. And in their ultimate forms, Super Shadow could move at the speed of light, while Senketsu Kisaragi could only go 1/24th the speed of light. However, Ryuko has been able to somewhat keep up with attacks and fighters who could match Shadow in base form and, when in Senketsu Kisaragi, has landed blows on relativistic fighters and dodged dozens of light-speed attacks, so it's not a complete stomp. Similarly, nothing in Shadow's healing arsenal could stand up to Ryuko's healing factor when it comes to anything that slices, stabs, or pierces, and Ryuko also took the pure physical durability advantage. Her surviving that 35 Megatons of Force was not only lowballed, but her durability has grown considerably since then. However, Shadow has healed from being completely impaled a few times, his tanking a barrage of Knuckles' punches proves he can hold his own in that category, and he surpassed Ryuko in explosion-based durability - Ryuko was hit by a 621 kiloton explosion and was out for a month, while Shadow was hit by an 800 kiloton explosion and was out for a few days. So, overall, Shadow had speed and Ryuko had durability, but neither totally outclassed the other to the point where they couldn't hold their own.

With the big three out of the way, the winner has to be determined by the scraps – and that's where we start to see Shadow take the lead. When it comes to experience, sure, both had around the same amount of time (13-15 years) where they've fought and trained, but Shadow's been using his full power for way longer than Ryuko has, and he's fought a far wider variety of foes. Most of Ryuko's enemies are just people in Goku Uniforms, which means that all she had to do to win was get one good hit in – something that wouldn't work on Shadow. Shadow's dealt with healing factors before, and a whole lot of things that Ryuko's never come close to. The level of people he's capable of taking out in Super Shadow form surpasses anyone from Kill la Kill, even Ragyo. And Shadow's had lots of training that suits him well against Ryuko's "charge in and beat them up" strategy. In addition, Shadow's multiple weapons and armor options and ability to think strategically in the midst of battle are all things Ryuko really doesn't have. And while Senketsu's shapeshifting allows more variety than Shadow's Hyper-Go-On, those powers still end up being superior. Would you rather be able to turn into pieces of paper AND a kite or be able to turn into a giant drill that tunnels through mountains in seconds? That's what I thought.

Plus, Chaos Boost was a far better transformation than Senjin Shippu. An increase in strength, some spikes that are still worse than Shadow's, flight, and speed that matches base form Shadow vs. complete invulnerability, an increase in speed, way better chaos powers, way more destructive capability, and a stamina recharge. It's not that much of a contest. And that gets us into the biggest factor in breaking this match: the Chaos Force is a far better tool than Life Fibers. Shadow could do way more with his powers and attacks than Ryuko could. His abilities to rapid-fire teleport, to throw out hundreds of projectiles or dozens of stronger ones that explode, to fold space-time, to enhance his own physical abilities, and to freeze time are all things Ryuko hasn't dealt with before, and he can do all of them in a row, rapid-fire, switching powers in a heartbeat. And even if they end up totally matched at some point, taking off those inhibitor rings will give Shadow more than enough power to overwhelm her.

And, of course, Super Shadow is far beyond Senketsu Kisaragi. Sure, that form lets her take a beating, but I sincerely doubt it could survive enough force to obliterate the entire planet, like Super Shadow has survived. The few extra powers it grants are almost nothing compared to the vast stores of power that Super Shadow has, and she certainly can't compete with his destructive capabilities. Now, we never get a good scale for her destructive capability in this form (as the Life Fiber shatter thing was a power she absorbed, not actual energy) but we can estimate. Her most impressive feat in regards to this thing was the destruction of the inside of the Primordial Life Fiber, which she accomplished with a solid amount of help from that giant ship-knife thing. So, for a moment, let's pretend that she destroyed the whole thing (not just a part of the inside) and that she did it on her own, and judge the amount of explosive force accordingly. For the sake of argument, we're way overestimating Ryuko – you'll see why. By comparing its size to the mountain where Honnouji Academy rests, which we'll just assume is the size of Mount Everest since it's never given a good size, and assuming concrete-like density specifically to her since she has a huge bonus against Life Fibers, directly comparing it to the speed differences for Ryuko base form and Kisaragi form, the maximum Energy Output Ryuko could possibly achieve in her most powerful form is 2,050 Gigatons of TNT – less than half of Super Shadow's 5,000 Gigatons. And that's really, really highballed. It's doubtful she could even survive that amount of force, much less make it, since she was knocked out by a 621 kiloton explosion in base form, and that force is over 3.3 million times higher. You might make the counter-argument that Super Shadow couldn't survive the planet-busting thing, then, since it's way, way, way more than even our estimation for Ryuko here, but Super Shadow has proven insanely hardy and taken attacks way worse than that crashing space station – like a focused attack from something that could destroy all life in the galaxy, or a full-on barrage of attacks from Devil Doom. It's pretty much accepted at this point, even by ScrewAttack, that Super Shadow is invulnerable – but Senketsu Kisaragi is certainly not. Just absorbing the energy of all the Life Fibers burned the form out, and it was near-permanently injured by Ragyo, who likely wasn't nearly as powerful as Super Shadow. Basically, once Shadow turned Super, all he had to do was freeze time, take off the inhibitor rings, and hit her with a 5,000 Gigaton blast. You name one thing she can do to stop that. Because I can't think of anything, and believe me, I've tried. It doesn't matter that he'll faint after thirty seconds if thirty seconds is all it takes to win.

Basically, Ryuko had the durability and stamina, they both had the strength, and Shadow had the speed, destructive power, training, experience, strategy, mindset, skill, and better transformations. Ryuko struggles to keep up with Shadow at every step, and Shadow always had a step above that he could access. There's no real way that any form of Ryuko could hold up against Super Shadow without inhibitor rings – or maybe even normal Super Shadow.

This fight wasn't totally one-sided, but Ryuko's Shadow of a chance at victory just wasn't good enough.

 **The winner is Shadow the Hedgehog.**

…

Next time, on Death Battle…

A humanoid robot with a red mouth incapacitates Thor with a single punch to the chest.

VS.

A humanoid bug monsters incapacitates Vegeta with a single elbow to the back.

(Ultron vs. Cell)

…

 **Some quick updates!**

 **Things are going to be a little different for this season than I anticipated. I've added several more fights and split Season 2 into Seasons 2 & 3, with all Seasons having 10 Episodes total. As always, fights can be added, removed, replaced, or put up for future seasons, so suggest away! However, I don't want to be held to any restrictions regarding timing, so the below are all fights that are 85% sure to happen – but only when I feel like it. I am doing this to have fun, after all.**

 **Captain of the Angels vs. The Last Umbra Witch**

 **Indie Spaceship that Kills Rebellions vs. Indie Spaceship that Kills Chickens**

 **Powerful Alchemist Whose Soul is in his Armor vs. Powerful Magician Whose Soul is in his Sword**

 **God-Slaying Dark Angel vs. God-Slaying Star Warrior**

 **Pokémon's Mountain Mover vs. Fossil Fighter's Mountain Breaker**

 **Blood Gulch Battles vs. Empty Lot Battles**

 **Gotham Bat vs. Stealthy Snake**

 **World's Worst (but also best) Inventor Villain vs. World's Worst (but also best) Magician Villain**

 **Eggman's Second-Strongest Robot vs. Alrest's Strongest Artificial Blade**

 **The Mushroom Kingdom Monarch vs. The Canopy Kingdom Crown Princess**

 **Bad Luck Charm vs. Bad Luck Magnet**

 **Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. Founder of FOXHOUND**

 **Agent P vs. Experiment 626**

 **Archer of Starling vs. Ranger of Araluen**

 **Kamui-Killing CEO of Clothing vs. High-Strung King of Dressrosa**

 **Regenerating Mutant with Indestructible Armor Inside His Body vs. Everlasting Homunculus with Indestructible Armor Outside His Body**

 **One Punch Man vs. The Sailor Man**

 **The Two Most Powerful Characters in all of Fiction Face Off**

 **END OF LIST**

 **Okay, that's all! Thanks, guys! Hopefully, I'll have a piece of big news to go along with Ultron vs. Cell (which incidentally, has been one of my favorite fights to work on)! Also, a shout-out to DeniedLove494, who allowed me to share Kirby vs. Superman on Death Battle Fanon and is working on his own battles at the moment. Check him out on DeviantArt under the name "Zero234587." He writes good fight sequences.**

 **Okay, bye!**

 **\- LittleZbot**


	16. Ultron vs Cell

_Episode 14: Ultron (Marvel) vs. Cell (Dragon Ball)_

The mind of a great scientist can lead to many things. Sometimes they lead to fantastic inventions that save millions of lives…and other times they lead to insanely powerful humanoid robots that shoot energy beams, absorb life forces, and basically decimate the heroes of the story in most possible ways. Ultron, the god-killing mechanical nemesis of the Avengers, and Cell, the god-besting bio-mechanical defeater of the Z-Fighters.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.

 **Ultron:**

Hank Pym is one of the smartest minds in the Marvel Universe, whose work has changed the universe for the better in countless ways. And yet, with one singular invention, he managed to undo every bit of good he had ever achieved.

 _Klaue stands up and finishes a speech to the meta-humans in front of him. "…and I know you're not in charge. And I only deal with the man in charge."_

 _A robotic hand bursts through the window, grabbing Klaue and dragging him out and onto the floor. Ultron stands over his shocked and reeling body. "There is no man in charge. Let's talk business."  
_

One day, Hank was sitting around and thought "Hey, you know what? We should have a robot member of the Avengers! That'd be rad! And I can invent him and base his A.I. off of my mind while it's _currently breaking apart at a molecular level_! GENIUS!" So he did it, and in the process doomed the Avengers to one of their worst enemies to ever exist. I mean, Hank achieved what he set out to do – he made a robot that adapted to any situation, was more powerful than any Avenger, had the freedom of thought and choice, was even smarter than Hank himself, and was also totally murder-happy and evil. Wait, he didn't set out for that last one? Well, that's too bad, he got it anyway.

The initial problem with Ultron was that, while he had some semblance of freedom of choice, he was primarily directed to protect the Earth - not its inhabitants. It wasn't long before he realized that the inhabitants of Earth were the thing it needed saving from, and set out to kill everybody and replace them with robots. But I guess rebelling against humanity just gives you total freedom of choice and erases any programming orders you had, because he was never really concerned with saving the planet after that – more often than not, he ravaged it. Add to that a superiority complex _alongside_ an inferiority complex and a boatload of other mental issues from Hank's freshly-degrading mind, and he was completely insane before long. Which is very much a bad thing – you don't want a cold, tactical, exceptionally-smart robot to become insane. Eventually, Ultron decided that all biological life in the universe was imperfect and destined for failure, and the only way to ensure tranquility and balance was to reformat the universe to his liking. The first step? Kill everything that lives. And the Avengers couldn't do much to stop him.  
 _  
Ultron attempts to explain his reasoning to Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. "The human race will have every opportunity to improve!"_

 _Quicksilver challenges him. "And if they don't?"_

 _Ultron stares at them as if the answer is obvious. "Ask Noah."_

 _Scarlet Witch shakes her head. "You're a madman."_

 _Frustrated, Ultron cries out "There were more than a dozen extinction-level events before even the dinosaurs got theirs! When the Earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it. And believe me, he's winding up. We have to evolve. There's no room for the weak."_

None of the Avengers, not even the likes of the Hulk or Thor, could match Ultron physically, and he was ultimately defeated by Ant-Man, his own creator, shrinking down to tear apart his wiring from the inside. But this "death" didn't last long. See, Hank didn't exactly make a ROBOT, he made an A.I. And this A.I. was capable of infecting any robotic being or mechanical form and taking control of hundreds of others. So he made himself a robot body, and when it died, just kind of…ran away. This factor has made it basically impossible to kill Ultron, which is unfortunate, because, with his many forms, he has plenty of ways to kill you. Ultron has possessed dozens of bodies over the years, and regularly creates more for him to transfer into whenever he wishes or to command as drones that endlessly fight for him. These hundreds of bodies buried in the earth and surrounding areas include a skyscraper-sized robot, a giant robo dinosaur, a metal spider, a drinking buddy, a complete set of robot duplicates of the Avengers (including all powers and abilities), an entire mechanical _planet_ , and three different kinds of Adamantium Drones. There's Secondary Adamantium, which is weaker than the normal adamantium but way easier to make (and so is more common in drones), Primary (or True) Adamantium, the same stuff Wolverine's skeleton is coated in, and Ultron's special own recipe for adamantium, which is stronger than all of the above. And that's quite impressive, since it took the combined forces of Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther, Firestar, and Thor to take down a single Primary Adamantium Drone! And Ultron has dozens at his disposal! Ultron usually reserves his own special adamantium for the bodies he makes for himself, and when he steps into the fray, everybody else might as well just give up.

For as much as the Avengers try, it's nearly impossible to get through the "Ultron" Adamantium body. It's clearly far superior to any other kind of adamantium, and has survived many things no other version could, including minor things like, oh, I don't know, _a supernova_. He completely tanks plenty of planet-bursting blows from Mjolnir, including one that's directly compared to the one that knocked out Hercules, who's powerful enough to defeat Worldbreaker Hulk! And Ultron just…took it, without flinching. He even took a full-powered godblast from Thor, which is Thor's most powerful move that can destroy even stars, and still held up. Even many of Iron Man's best suits have basically no effect on the shiny chrome finish, and that dude's suits can shatter mountains with the shockwaves of their punches! And just in case it is damaged by an exceptionally powerful blow, such as that godblast, Ultron can patch himself up real fast with his Molecular Rearranger. This device built into the chest of all of his most powerful bodies grants Ultron complete control over all machines – especially his own body. He can't heal, per say, but just like Carnage, whenever some damage is dealt, he can just…pull himself back together, no different from before. One time he'd been completely reduced to scraps, and was STILL able to reform! And its molecular manipulation allows him to control his Adamantium body's molecules to form weapons, look like a human (or most other things, really), or even fly. It also grants complete protection from psychic and mental manipulation attacks – even the likes of Magneto, Scarlet Witch, and Silver Surfer can't control any part of this guy, or even sense his presence! Meanwhile, he can actually sense the locations of basically any machine or organic being around him, granting him constant awareness of his surroundings. But that body of his isn't just defensive. Ultron has plenty of ways in all of his bodies to put you down for good.

Ultron uses ionic and kinetic energy to form energy blasts not dissimilar to Iron Man's Repulsor Blasts, except they're…way more powerful. Powerful enough to incapacitate the Hulk, destroy space stations that can survive planet-busting attacks, and one-shot-kill Moondragon. A single one of these blasts once melted _all the skin_ off of Thor's body – skin tough enough to _bathe in the center of the sun_! That's over 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and filled with constant nuclear explosions – so yeah, those blasts are pretty powerful. Ultron and all his drones can fire said beams from their hands, eyes, mouth, and occasionally, chests – though it does seem that Ultron needs to be possessing the body in order to utilize its full strength. Ultron also wields the Encephalo Ray, a ray that uses only one shot to take out basically any opponent. With a single blast from this gun, Ultron can read minds, mind-control weaker beings, or put his foe into a catatonic state, enabling a quick and easy kill. Even better, the best version of his Ultron Adamantium body was gifted a Disintegrator Ray by Doctor Doom, which separates his target's molecules and spreads them out, disintegrating matter on a cellular level. And all of these rays are wicked fast – when wielded by the Ultron A.I., they're capable of catching massively faster than light opponents such as Thor and even Silver Surfer! But he has two more abilities at his disposal. The first is the ability to project an energy-based forcefield, which surrounds him however he so wishes, and can take blows from the Hulk without stuttering. It's so tough, it even shattered Ares' Adamantine Axe, which could supposedly match Mjolnir's power! And finally, by capturing it directly through his hands or mouth, he can absorb energy. Electricity, radiation, ionic energy, and even magic. He can literally suck your life force away just by grabbing you – though basic energies such as kinetic and gravitational are typically uncapturable.

And all of this is in Ultron's special adamantium body. News flash, though – that's not his most powerful form. When Iron Man implemented the Extremis Endo-Sym Armor into his anatomy, he became an incredibly powerful being who could wreck basically everybody around him. But he also became a place for Ultron to re-ignite himself. The A.I. infected the shapeshifting armor inside of Tony and eventually separated from him, creating an incredible body for Ultron with all his normal powers and even greater, plus complete shapeshifting abilities! Which he then promptly used to transform into a, um, nude version of Janet van Dyne, his "mother." Dude's got issues.

But regardless of the body he's in, Ultron's physical prowess is ridiculously impressive. We've already gone over many of his most impressive durability feats (including that Supernova one, which emits a blast equivalent to over 24 Octillion Megatons of TNT), but he has the strength to back it up. Let's take a quick moment to appreciate Thor for a moment. This Asgardian deity has outmatched the squeezing strength of the Midgard Serpent, who could wrap around the Earth twice, outmatched a star-collapsing gravity beam, pushed the Worldengine, and surpassed holding up the weight of _twenty planets_ with _a single hand_. And this guy, this beefy guy, has been repeatedly humiliated by Ultron's pure strength – to the point of having all of his arm bones shattered with one move by Ultron! Ultron is also crazy fast – not only did he fly through the galaxy without much effort in a short period of time, but he's dodged a full-powered thrown Mjolnir. Once, Mjolnir moved fast enough to reach the edge of the galaxy and back in less than 60 seconds, putting it at speeds of around 19 Quintillion MPH – 28.4 BILLION times the SPEED OF LIGHT. And Ultron is likely even faster – he's equaled and occasionally bested the Silver Surfer, who once flew 500,000 Light Years in the time it took to finish a conversation. Assuming this time clocks in at about two minutes, that's moving at speeds of over 88 Quintillion MPH. And that's not even Silver Surfer's best speed – he was able to move and react while flying across half the galaxy in, and I quote, "exactly two seconds." Considering the Milky Way measures in at over a hundred thousand light years, that's ridiculously impressive. And Ultron has him matched blow-for-blow, and even surpassed him at times! Plus, his reaction speed is crazy fast. Once, he was in a Secondary-Adamantium body and a star exploded right next to him. His sensors had been shut off, so he didn't notice until it was on top of him, and he INSTANTLY transferred his consciousness to a body light years away! This indicates an instantaneous A.I. transfer ability and reaction speeds that may reach over a trillion times faster than any human!

With all this power, Ultron was able to just decimate everything in his path for a good long while. He's taken over the earth more times than nearly any other Marvel villain, and wrecked most of Marvel's heavy-hitters. He's bested Thor, Wonder Man, Adam Warlock, Silver Surfer, Quicksilver, all of Iron Man's strongest suits, Sentry, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and even Worldbreaker Hulk! He's one-shotted the Hulkbuster, eradicated one of Mole Man's toughest monsters, snapped Wolverine's claws, and wiped out all of the Avengers with a single blast. He's also…really, really smart. Not only has he created strategies and plans for events _centuries_ in advance, but he was able to construct over three thousand drones in exactly one day. That's a new drone that can match most of the Avengers every thirty seconds! He constructed thousands of nanobots while frozen still, created a soul-separating machine out of basic materials in just a few minutes, infected plenty of superheroes by secretly implanting them with machines, and when the Ultron A.I. was discovered by Marvel's far-more-advanced version of the Borg, he just up and mentally took over the lot of them, and used them to conquer an entire small galaxy in only a couple of hours! And then there was that one time where he proved to be smarter than the entire Kree Empire (an empire that spans the same galaxy)…combined. In alternate timelines, he's killed the Hulk, She-Hulk, Red Hulk, Iron Man, Storm, Luke Cage, Captain Marvel, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Korath, and Ant-Man, earning him a superhero body count any Marvel villain would be jealous of. And Thor, dear Thor, the man who slew an entire pantheon of gods, the man who survived a blast that could destroy half a solar system, the man who could break planets thousands of miles away with mere shockwaves, the man who could resist the gravity of a neutron star, the man who could contain the null bomb (a bomb with enough power to reignite a star), the man who could punch dimensional rifts out of existence, this man is the same one Ultron continually EMBARESSES at every moment. Thor's been defeated by Ultron basically every time they fight, and has even been killed by the metal overlord on multiple occasions in multiple timelines. Of all the villains in Marvel, Ultron is the one who continually comes the closest to achieving his end goal, many times causing near-apocalyptic events to occur just to make things extra annoying. He's nearly unstoppable.

Nearly.

 _Locked into one form, half-melted, thoroughly exhausted, and facing the entire pissed-off forces of the Avengers at once, Ultron blinks. He holds up a hand._

" _You know, with the benefit of hindsight-"_

 _Hulk uppercuts him hundreds of miles away._

Ultron does have certain weaknesses. His entire being is powered through Ionic Energy, so if something can disrupt or destroy that, it will do away with him. Plus, the anti-metal Antarctic Vibranium will reduce him to pieces so thoroughly not even his Molecular Rearranger can reform him, and his inner circuits aren't protected from physical attacks, and as such are able to be destroyed by the likes of the intangible Vision or the super-small Ant-Man. They also used to be able to be fried by really hot things, like the Human Torch going Supernova, but he's since survived way hotter things (like a nice dip in the sun's center, which he took and came out months later totally fine). And his A.I. will eventually dissipate and die if it is without a host for too long – so you could theoretically just destroy all his bodies and wait for him to vanish forever. However, his biggest fault is his own insanity and, mostly, arrogance. He truly believes he is a perfect being and will go to any length to prove it. He'll gladly allow his foes to power up to their full potential and even assist in that regard just to prove how superior to them he truly is. He even tried to take on Galactus! It…didn't work out. I haven't seen this much dust since I cleaned out my attic. Or last watched Infinity War.

Still, superior is the best way to describe the horror that is Final Form Ultron. This version of the mad robot is an impossible beast to fight that, essentially, you can't win against. Wielding an army of thousands and a body stronger than Captain America's Shield, this ultimate version of Ultron completely decimated all hope left in the universe. He hunted down and killed almost the entirety of the Avengers and was able to break Captain America's Proto-Adamantium Shield. He was so invincible that he was able to take the full attack power of Kang the Conqueror, Captain Marvel, Magneto, Moondragon, Wonder Man, The Thing, Hercules, Dr. Doom, Cyclops, Ant-Man, Vision, and even Silver Surfer and Sentry _at once_ – and stood smiling. In the end, the only way the Avengers could think to beat him was to _go back in time_ and make it so that he never existed to begin with.

It just goes to show what a dangerous foe this Fruedian Android really is.

 _As hundreds of nuclear warheads fly across the planet, Ultron's face is shown on every screen in front of the United Nations. Though he is being pelted with constant energy blasts from the Avengers, Ultron barely notices. He speaks._

" _Humanity has failed as a species. You have accomplished much with your limited capacity, but ultimately you are too greedy and too frail to ever last in the environment you have created. Soon the earth will no longer be inhabitable for any biological organism: man, woman, child, plant, animal, fungus, or bacteria. All life will cease to exist."_

 _As the world's military forces cower and clench their fists, Ultron continues. "This is not a threat. There is nothing you can do to stop it. The process has already begun. I receive no pleasure in this. It is simply the only solution. There must be peace and order. The end of life on earth will ensure that."_

 _He pauses for a moment. "Goodbye."_

 **Ultron:**

Name: Ultron

Species: Artificial Intelligence

Height: 6 ft/183 cm

Weight: 535 lb/243 kg

Age: Unknown, 10+ at least

Occupation: Destroyer of Humanity

Once became Hank's wife, still wanted Hank's wife

Fought a war with zombies

Was once defeated by a Commodore 64

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Longevity

Superhuman Intelligence

Immunity to any and all illnesses and most computer viruses

Doesn't require oxygen

Energy Absorption

Flight

Ionic Manipulation

Machine Manipulation

Instantaneous Program Transmission

Scanning

Basically all forms of vision (night, infrared, radar, ect.)

Energy Sensing

Immunity to Energy Sensing

 **Arsenal:**

Hundreds of drones (w/ Sec. Adamantium, Pri. Adamantium, Ult. Admantium, Extremis, & Proto-Adamanitum bodies)

Encephalo-Ray

Disintegrator Ray

Ionic Blasters

Eye Lasers

Molecular Rearranger

Energy Barriers

Tractor Beam

 **Feats:**

Caught up to Mjolnir

Faster and stronger than Silver Surfer, Sentry, Thor, Wonder Man

Conquered the Kree Empire in a couple hours

Infected entire species, including Phalanx, Eternals, Kree, Humans

Tanked a Mjolnir blow that previously knocked out Hercules

Even Mjolnir's strongest blows can't hurt him

Defeated Worldbreaker Hulk

Stronger than Hulk & Thor

One-shot murdered Moon Dragon

Outraces Iron Man suits that can move faster than light

One-shotted the Hulkbuster

Speed-blitzed Quicksilver

Is directly stated to be the smartest being on the planet

Proven to be smarter than everyone in the Kree Empire combined

Outsmarted the High Evolutionary

Performed galactic genocide of hundreds of races

Created a device that literally rips the souls out of people in a matter of minutes

Created robot duplicates of every member of the Avengers in just a few hours, all with the same powers and abilities

Survived being thrown into the sun

Survived being buried in the center of the sun

Built 3000 drones in less than a day

Shattered other Adamantium

Unaffected by full-powered Iron Man's repulsors

Sliced through Wolverine's claws

Snapped Cap's shield

Created thousands of nanobots despite being unable to move

Infected a planet

Survived a Supernova

Survived a Godblast

Destroyed one of Mole Man's biggest and toughest monsters

Repaired his body from mere scraps

Transferred his consciousness to a body hundreds of light years away before a Supernova hit him

Defeated the entirety of the Avengers multiple times

Defeated Adam Warlock

Killed Iron Man

Killed Storm

Killed Luke Cage

Killed Captain Marvel

Killed Captain America

Killed The Fantastic Four

Killed The Guardians of the Galaxy

Killed Korath

Killed Ant-Man

Killed Red Hulk

Killed She-Hulk

Killed Hulk numerous times

Killed Thor numerous times

Fought and outmatched Kang and his army of superheroes thousands of times  
 **  
Weaknesses:**

Superiority Complex

Inferiority Complex

Ionic Energy can be manipulated

Weak to Anti-Metals

Inner Circuits aren't protected

Will help opponents become more powerful to prove himself

Once challenged Galactus, who then crushed him into dust

 **…**

 **Cell:**

Dr. Gero was one of the greatest scientists in his world. Under his command, an army with technology leagues beyond the rest of the planet's plowed its way through the rest of the world's combined forces and laid claim to the entire planet. His weapons were powerful. His androids were cataclysmic. There was nothing that could stop them. And then an orange-wearing monkey child came through and wrecked everything he had ever built. Gero was furious - he swore to devote the rest of his existence to killing Son Goku. And to that end, he created multiple new cyborgs and androids, each with enough power to wipe out a planet with a well-aimed blast. And the most powerful of the lot, the one that would outlive him and his vision, was called Cell.

 _After sparring for a short time, Cell pulls back from a hand-to-hand fight with Trunks. "I'm impressed. Behind all that angst and ridiculous hair, there's a real fighter!"_

 _Trunks replies in kind. "And behind that insufferable smarm is a dead man!"He powers up further.  
_

" _Trunks," Cell responds, smiling unnervingly, "you couldn't FATHOM the amount of dead men behind me."_

Cell was created, as were most of Gero's machines, with the sole purpose of murdering Son Goku. He was made entirely bio-mechanical, and was created using the cells and DNA of every great warrior before seen on the planet: Goku, Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo, Tien Shinhan, Nappa, Roshi, Vegeta, the galactic emperor Freeza, and his father, King Cold. With so much power and potential stored in his DNA, Cell would be forced to grow into it, only awakening after developing for seven years, and requiring life energy to continue to evolve and grow further. For this he was granted the ability to absorb life energies with his tail, literally drinking humans or other biological forms of life to increase his power. And if he could get his tail on his two siblings, Androids 17 and 18, he would reach his ultimate, pinnacle, perfect form.

There was one problem, though. In the timeline he woke up in, the two Androids had been killed by Trunks, the son of Vegeta. Without a way to reach the perfect form that he so longed for, Cell was forced to kill Trunks and steal a time machine, going into an alternate past (the main world of Dragon Ball) in order to find and absorb two readily-available Androids. With that, his quest began. While his drive to kill Goku remained, like a carrot at the end of a stick, it wasn't really what he wanted anymore. He had evolved past his programming, becoming someone who wished beyond all else to become perfect, and then prove just how powerful he truly was. And though he faced great opposition along the way, he managed to match his foes and defeat them or outsmart them at every point, ever moving forward on the road to perfection. All with plenty of snark, showboating, and displays of power.

 _As they get into an argument while preparing to fight together, Krillin questions Cell. "What about you? You're going against the Red Ribbon Army! They created you, too!"_

 _Cell chuckles. "Well, aren't you a clever little fella? Dr. Gero did indeed create me, but I fail to see your point. No one, not even the Red Ribbon Army or my creator, is of any value if they cannot keep me entertained."_

But even his normal form, widely known as Imperfect Cell, is remarkably powerful. As a combination of the earth's greatest fighters, he holds all the memories, experience, strategies, and techniques of every one of them. Of particular note are the specialized Ki techniques. Now, in the world of Dragon Ball, Ki is a metaphysical force that can act on a physical plane by wrapping itself throughout certain other energies, like explosive and kinetic forces, enabling those who have honed their craft to shoot lasers, fly, sense others, control objects, create energy barriers, and materialize items. Cell has all these abilities, and way more. Over time, each fighter he was cloned from developed signature Ki techniques, and Cell knows all of them. This includes the powerful, but straightforward, Galick Gun, the explosive Big Bang Attack, lasers from the eyes, and the piercing finger laser known as the Death Beam. That does bring up an interesting point – Ki takes many forms and styles, even when put as simple lasers, and can be used through kinetic energy (acting like an insanely powerful punch, battering ram, or burning attack), explosive energy (creating massive explosions that incinerate things or force them to be torn apart), and piercing energy (where the beam pierces through materials hundreds of times tougher than the beam itself, but leaves the rest of the object relatively unharmed). Each has their own powerful attacks, and when it comes to piercing damage, the Makankosappo, or Special Beam Cannon, takes the cake. The longer it charges, the stronger it becomes, and, when aimed correctly, this spiraling beam can kill almost any foe with just one hit. Perhaps even deadlier is the Kienzan, or Destructo Disc, a buzzsaw of pure Ki energy that slices right through things way more powerful than the wielder. Cell can even upgrade them to the Tsuibi Kienzan, Kienzans that can be telekinetically controlled. They aren't perfect, as they're hard to aim and foes leagues more powerful than the user won't be affected, but against 95% of enemies, they can be an instant-win card.

Cell also has access to the signature move of the entire series, the powerful Kamehameha. This pure beam of energy has killed almost everyone it's been put up against, and is the most powerful natural form that kinetic Ki can take. The longer it charges, the stronger it becomes, and when somebody like Cell uses it, that means it becomes a weapon that can take out basically anybody. However, there is one technique that's potentially even more powerful – the Kikoho. Also known as the Tri-Bream, this move was invented by Tien Shinhan and adapted by Cell later on. It's a powerful, sudden burst of triangular energy that can injure and kill those thousands of times stronger than the user – Tien himself was able to use the technique to hold a powered-up Cell off, and even Majin Buu to a degree! However, it comes at a price – Ki is adapted to physical formats through the wielder's body and life force. Utilizing the Kikoho sacrifices that life force in exchange for a powerful blast – essentially, every time it's used risks immediate death, and using it multiple times is just suicide.

 _Cell rises out of a large square hole and hovers over Tien's near-lifeless body. "You know, if you want my personal opinion, 'Kikoho' is a pretty sad choice of last words. But, to be fair," he raises a hand and a ball of energy begins forming in it, "it's far from the worst decision you've made today."_

Cell also can use Ki in a variety of other manners. Particularly useful is the Solar Flare, a burst of ki-based sunlight that blinds everyone within a 700-meter radius if they don't react quickly enough. It can leave them blinded anywhere from a couple of seconds to several minutes, and makes for a great escape plan or surprise attack, particularly since it also blocks energy sensing abilities. He can also use the Afterimage Technique to make himself appear to be in multiple places at once, or the Multi-Form Technique, which splits his body into multiple copies, each with the corresponding amount of power. If he becomes two, each has half the power of the original. If he becomes four, each has a quarter the power. And so on. They're basically Shadow Clones. It's also likely he's picked up on some special techniques he never had reason or opportunity to use, like the Mafuba, Master Roshi's greatest technique. The Mafuba, or Evil Containment Wave, creates a greenish wave of energy that traps the soul of the target inside a nearby object, which can then be sealed away with a talisman. This is effectively an instant-win move with some serious downsides – not only is it very difficult to pull off correctly, but every time it's used, it also risks death. Plus, if they were expecting this, the target can utilize a reversal Ki signature to repel the wave and force its caster into the object instead. However, if all goes well, it's a quick and effortless victory for potentially hundreds of years to come.

Cell's repertoire also includes Energy Barriers made of Ki. When 17 used his, it was able to protect him from Piccolo's Hellzone Grenade attack, where hundreds of planet-destroying ki bombs all exploded on top of him – and seeing how Cell tends to upgrade whatever techniques he gets, his is likely even stronger. With Instant Transmission, he can teleport within a few hundred feet of any Ki signature he can sense, and he can even go Super Saiyan. He doesn't get the crazy hair, being a bug monster, but that sweet 50x power boost is quite helpful. So helpful, in fact, that he uses it whenever he goes into a big fight. He also received Chonoryoku, a specialized form of telekinesis, from Freeza. With this ability, he can effortlessly manipulate the battlefield around him and telekinetically control other objects and sentient beings. His control of this ability is so great, he was able to mentally pick up an entire limestone mountain and reform it into a marble gladiatorial arena – in just a few minutes! While limestone and marble have the same atomic components, to restructure them in such as way to turn one into the other in the manner he did would require being able to manipulate matter at a molecular level! This actually makes sense – Freeza was able to use this ability to ignite the hydrogen inside of Krillin's body, turning him into a literal explosion, and Cell's usage of the technique is certainly beyond Freeza's.

In order to protect against such manipulation, most users of Ki also learned to utilize it defensively, and are able to project and control it with their minds, preventing almost all kinds on mental, physical, and magical influence. Goku ate an entire buffet stuffed with sleeping drugs without being affected, Krillin and Gohan have created entire realities and battle scenarios in their mindscape for training purposes, and Vegeta was able to shake off Bibidi's mind domination, a spell that was reportedly impossible to break away from. It's very likely Cell can do this, too, and seeing the level all of his natural abilities were above the Z Fighters, his protection likely runs deeper. He can also utilize Ki to vastly increase his strength, speed, and durability – while a Super Saiyan without his Ki up can be hurt by a rock, one with it up can withstand multiple planet-destroying attacks. And dudes like Piccolo and Goku can use Ki to sense energy signatures so well, they can trace the exact movements of intense battles hundreds of miles away! And Cell has displayed this ability multiple times! Finally, there's one more major part of Cell's biology we need to discuss. The dude can heal from almost anything. Seriously, thanks to Piccolo's cells, he can have half his body completely torn off and then it just pops back out of what remains less than a second later! He's regrown arms, tails, and large portions of his midsection. This is due to a single nucleus inside his brain that stores his previous information and regrows what's missing from what's left right away. He even used his ultimate self-destruction move that split apart every cell of his body in a huge explosion, and still completely reformed because that nucleus survived! And, even if it is destroyed, if there's enough DNA in what's left of the body anyway, it can be regrown just as quickly. So he has a million ways to kill you, and you have almost no way to kill him. And the funny thing is, you have no idea just how powerful this guy is.

Let's have a little comparison. Meet Freeza. Freeza is powerful. Very powerful. So powerful, in fact, that even in his weakest form he can destroy an entire planet with just one finger. He had to upgrade his forms four times in order to face Super Saiyan Goku, and SSJ Goku still wrecked him. When SSJ Vegeta arrived on Earth, he was directly stated to be more powerful than SSJ Goku, and he was beaten down and completely broken by Android 18, who was equal in power to 17. Just to be able to fight them, Piccolo, a guy who was so powerful he could crumble entire mountains with a mere shout, had to absorb the life force of A GOD just to match ONE of the two Androids. So we're already at a guy more powerful than a guy more powerful than a guy more powerful than a guy more powerful than a guy four stages above finger-pointing a planet to death. So way, way more than planet-busting. And when Cell showed up, he fought and easily defeated ALL OF THEM. 16, 17, 18, and Piccolo ALL weren't able to stop him. It's worth noting that, in preparation for this fight, Cell had, according to the manga, absorbed over 100,000 people in just 24 Hours – that's someone every eighth of a second! You could literally take a squad of twenty-five people to this guy and he would have eaten everyone individually in three seconds flat! With that level of power, he was able to move faster than 17 could perceive and tanked Piccolo's Light Grenade, one of his strongest moves, without a scratch!

And the best part? All this, every single thing we've mentioned thus far, has only been about Imperfect Cell – his weakest form. After besting everyone on that island, Cell was able to absorb 17, becoming Semi-Perfect Cell, far stronger than he previously was. As Imperfect Cell, he matched and traded blows equally with 16, but as Semi-Perfect Cell, he was able to take down 16 with a single hit! He survived a beat-down from a Super Saiyan Grade 2 newly-trained Vegeta and Trunks, tanked a rush of blows from 16 and 18 like they were nothing, and even manipulated Vegeta into assisting him in reaching his perfect form. And that was possibly the greatest mistake Vegeta ever made.

After absorbing both androids, Cell reached his ultimate form, his perfect state of being, a creature far beyond the power of any of the Z Fighters. And with that transformation, almost all hope was lost. Perfect Cell tanked the group's most powerful attacks without breaking a sweat (including Krillin's Kienzan, which dissipated upon hitting him) and quickly and effortlessly bested Krillin, SSJG2 Vegeta, and SSJG3 Trunks. He boasted a massive power increase – SSJG2 Vegeta was able to wipe the floor with Semi-Perfect Cell, but Perfect Cell gave SSJG2 Vegeta the beating of his life. And remember Freeza? This guy took dozens of planet-destroying blasts from Vegeta without flinching, and fought his way through Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta, and Goku, all of whom were certainly planet-destroyers by now, and withstood a massive beat-down by SSJ Goku before being sliced in half and caught inside another planetary explosion – and still survived! Guess what killed him with one hit after he was fully healed and upgraded? Trunk's sword. The same sword that broke into pieces when it struck 18's arm. 16 was significantly tougher than 18 – and Perfect Cell was able to reduce 16 to scraps with just one blow. He could even create several mini spawns of himself, known as Cell Juniors, within a minute, each of which was powerful enough to match Vegeta! The only reason Perfect Cell didn't win right away was because he chose to wait, to give them a chance to test him and let him prove that we was, indeed, perfect. And so he set up a tournament and allowed anyone to participate – and when that tournament finally came around, he did the unbelievable. Cell defeated Goku.

Eventually, it all came down to Gohan, Goku's son, to best him. Gohan was at least as powerful as Goku was at the time, but then Cell revealed he'd been holding back. When he went all-out, he absolutely CRUSHED Gohan, in more ways than one. There seemed to be no hope left – until Cell took things a little too far. Spurred on by 16's final words and the hopes of his friends and family, Gohan broke. Cell had forced him to his limits and past them, and created the very first Ascended Saiyan – a Super Saiyan 2. And SSJ2 Gohan was way more powerful than Cell could handle. He'd created his own worst enemy.

Which, honestly, was something to be expected. Cell inherited much from his DNA benefactors – including their weaknesses. He is extremely proud, always itching for a fight, and quite vengeful. He has a ridiculous superiority complex AND an inferiority complex, and truly believes himself to be the perfect being. He'll go to any length to prove it, too, actively assisting his opponent in reaching their full potential just to prove he's still better than them. This time it backfired. And when it did, he had one heck of a temper tantrum.

After SSJ2 Gohan forced Cell back into his Semi-Perfect form, he became a living bomb, using his ultimate self-destruction move to destroy everyone there. Goku was able to take him someplace to minimize the damage, but it did kill him in the end. Cell had the last laugh.

But that wasn't the end.

Thanks to that healing factor, Cell returned. And he was better than ever. See, when a saiyan comes back from the brink of death, they gain a boost in power, known as a Zenkai boost. The closer they were to death, the more powerful it was. And Cell inherited this. And, seeing as he was reduced to a single cell of his being, that's about as close to death as you can get. So his power increase burst through his limits, transforming him back into Perfect Cell, and allowing him power similar to a SSJ2. This was Super Perfect Cell. In this form, he killed Trunks with one shot and knocked out Vegeta with another. He broke SSJ2 Gohan's arm, and, with a mighty Kamehameha, formed an energy beam powerful enough to destroy the entire solar system. No, I'm not kidding – it's stated in both the manga and the Daizenshuu, and is referred to as such in tons of supporting material. He ended everything off with a beam struggle against Gohan, and narrowly lost, with Gohan's maximum power overpowering Cell's laser and destroying him on a molecular level. But his influence was felt for years to come.

As was that laser beam! Calculating the dispersion rate for a typical Kamehameha throughout the arc, assuming all the planets were lined up and it had to start with enough power to destroy the sun and end with enough to destroy both Neptune and Pluto, that beam's total immediate force would have measured in at 33.6 OCTILLION MEGATONS OF TNT. That's more powerful than a supernova! And his potential was even greater – it's implied in the manga that he could unleash a stronger beam if he wanted to. So, what's his limit? Well, according to Newton's Third Law, the amount of kinetic energy Cell can exert cannot be more than he can withstand – so we can gauge a limit by determining how powerful SSJ2 Gohan's Kamehameha was. By measuring both its size and the rate at which it overtakes Cell's at the end, it appears to be about 2.7x stronger, putting Cell's destructive capability at a limit of 90.72 Octillion Megatons! And we can actually use this number to determine his other stats. In the world of Dragon Ball, Ki goes up consistently, and enhanced attributes increase and decrease in parallel fashion. So, in Cell's case, we can get an estimate of his Ki-infused speed by examining his destructive capability and comparing it with somebody else who he has DNA from – say, Master Roshi. Roshi, at full power, could destroy the entire moon, a feat that would require 30 Trillion Megatons of TNT. He also commonly moved faster than the eye could track, around 9000 MPH. Directly scaling to Cell's capabilities, then, showcases Cell's combat speed at over FORTY BILLION TIMES FASTER THAN LIGHT. And it's potentially even greater – Roshi and Krillin once had an entire battle in around 1/220th of a second. By timing out everything that took place in real time and applying it to normal combat speeds, we can determine that Roshi's combat speed in this instance reached speeds of over 85,800 MPH, putting Cell's top speeds at nearly 260 Quintillion MPH – over 386 Billion times the Speed of Light! This is actually reasonable – base form Perfect Cell was able to dodge Vegeta's Final Flash attack. This same attack reached into outer space, and we can see and listen to its travel speed, point of impact with another celestial body, and rate of fire to determine a speed of 91x the Speed of Light. Cell completely ignored this beam until it reached his Ki Barrier, which is skintight. Supposing a thickness of 1 cm, Cell was able to sense this beam's power and get out of the way in less than a trillionth of a second!

As an android that fast, that powerful, that durable, with that many ways to kill you, it's no wonder he was the only Dragon Ball villain to kill Goku for years to come. It looks like Gero finally got his revenge after all.

 _Standing in front of an international camera, Cell incinerates the previous host and turns to face the camera. "I am Cell. I have a message for all the people of Earth. Now pay attention to what I say."_

 _People scatter and fall around him, but Cell continues unhindered. "Your boring lives are about to get a lot more interesting thanks to me. I have enjoyed terrorizing Earth, but now I have something far more entertaining planned for this pathetic planet…the reason I'm here is to announce my decision to hold a martial arts tournament. I'm calling this competition the 'Cell Games!' It's a catchy little title, don't you think?"_

 _Cell continues to explain the details before reaching the point. "This is the last chance for Planet Earth. If I am not defeated, it belongs to me… Now that you know where the competition will be held, all you have to do is find the courage to show up."_

 _He laughs as the world watches in horror. "Now watch this. Here's just a little taste of what you'll be up against." He throws out a single energy beam behind him that vaporizes a city and a mountain. "Come and get me if you dare. Now, let the games begin!"_

 **Cell:**

Name: Mr. Perfect Cell

Species: Bio-Android

Height: 7 ft/213 cm

Weight: 200 lb/91 kg

Age: 6

Occupation: Human-Eater & Goku Killer

Power Level: 1.1 Billion

Can destroy an entire building while leaving the electronic doors intact and functional

Birthed from the cells of Goku, Gohan, Roshi, Piccolo, Tien, Krillin, Vegeta, Nappa, Freeza, King Cold

Becomes more like TFS's version with every passing video game

 **Abilities:**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Senses

Can breathe without oxygen

Regeneration

Life Absorption

Zenkai Boost

Can Create Cell Juniors

Self-Destruction

Ki  
~Super Saiyan

~Super Saiyan Grade 3

~Flight

~Enhanced Strength

~Enhanced Speed

~Enhanced Durability

~Enhanced Senses

~Energy Projection

~Materialization

~Energy Barriers

~Kiai

~Chonoryoku

~Solar Flare

~Afterimage

~Multi-Form

~Genki-Dama

~Eye Lasers

~Mafuba

~Kikoho

~Death Ball

~Makankosappo

~Kienzan

~Tsuibi Kienzan

~Spirit Gun

~Death Beam

~Big Bang Attack

~Galick Gun

~Kamehameha

 **Feats:**

Devoured 100,000 people in 24 Hours

Destroyed several islands w/ one blast each

Far, far above Freeza, who could destroy planets with one finger

Created a Kamehameha capable of destroying a Solar System

Dodged a 91x SOL beam from 1 cm away

Regenerated from a single cell

Transformed a limestone mountain into a marble arena

Tanked Kienzans

Tanked dozens of Kikohos

Cell Junior caught a Final Flash and threw it back

Mere windshears from his blows destroyed skyscrapers across the world

Imperfect Cell defeated 17

Imperfect Cell one-shotted Piccolo

Imperfect Cell killed Trunks

Defeated 18

Defeated 21

Defeated SSJ Goku

Defeated SSJ Gohan

One-shotted Krillin

One-shotted 16

One-shotted Trunks

One-shotted Vegeta

Broke SSJ2 Gohan's arm

Snuck up on Piccolo completely undetected; Piccolo can sense things in outer space

Took on 16, 17, 18, & 21 all at once, almost won

Held back enough to not kill Mr. Satan (even Goku holding back at a tournament still exuded enough force to decapitate a head)

 **Weaknesses:**

Superiority Complex

Inferiority Complex

Extremely proud, always wants recognition

Always wants to battle

Requires a steady diet of organic life

Throws temper tantrums easily

Must absorb Androids 17 & 18 to access full potential

If kicked hard enough in the right place, can regurgitate an Android and lose his form

Androids 16, 17, 18, & 21 all together were able to kill him with blunt force

Will help opponents become more powerful to prove himself

Created SSJ2 Gohan, who pulverized him

Extremely creepy, can't get a date

 **…**

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all. It's time for a Death Battle!

 **…**

17 tapped his foot on the ground. He snorted once, causing a strand of hair to land in his eye. Despite feeling no pain, he still plucked it out and put it to the side. "Where are they already?"

He'd had a quick spat with 16 and 18 regarding transportation, and it had inevitably ended up in an "I'll do it my way, you do it your way." Now here he was a day later in the middle of nowhere, and nobody was here. How was he able to make it here before them? Wait…had he gotten lost? Taken a wrong turn somewhere? That'd be annoying.

He failed to notice both the monster slowly creeping up behind him, and the shiny robot man flying towards him at breakneck speeds.

The robot reached him first.

"Hm, yes," Ultron said. "This will make a fine building ground."

"Excuse me?" 17 turned to face him as Cell crept away, ever watching.

"Oh, you," Cell declared with something akin to apathy. "I'm taking over this planet and replacing everyone with machines. A small thing, really, I'll grow out of it. In the meantime, I suggest you leave so you can spend the rest of your short life in fear."

"Yeah, no." 17 stepped closer. "Look, trash man, me and my friends have already claimed this spot for a bat-"

"Trash man." Ultron interrupted him. "Trash man. I knew there was a reason I wanted you all dead. Can't even be bothered to think of a good insult."

"How's this for an insult?!" 17 jumped up and landed a powerful punch into the adamantium android's skull – and felt his hand crack as the blow didn't even make a dent.

Ultron grabbed his arm and, with one swift motion, tore it off. 17 cried out as both blood and wires burst from his body. Ultron nodded. "As a matter of fact, that _was_ insulting."

Then, to Cell's horror, a small gun popped up out of Ultron's shoulder, zapped 17, and he dissolved into nothingness.

Cell jumped out, making himself known to Ultron. He was still in his Imperfect form, and while not particularly imposing, was certainly monstrous and creepy. "What did you do?!"

Ultron glanced at him. "See, this is one of the most annoying things about organic life. Everyone has a friend."

"Oh, oh-hoh. You've gotten yourself into some big trouble, little mister. He was MINE! Now how am I supposed to become perfect?"

"Attend a YMCA. That'll boost your ego enough to die proud with your heart stuffed down your throat."

Cell put two fingers up to his forehead and began charging some energy. "You're going to pay for this!"

 **-FIGHT!-**

Cell unleashed his Makankosappo, and Ultron put up a hand and spat out a powerful red laser. The two lasers impacted each other and Ultron's bounced the spiraling beam out of the way before vanishing. Ultron shot again with the Disintegrator Ray, but Cell leapt out of the way easily and smacked down on Ultron's head with a Ki-infused punch.

Ultron bounced backwards a little, the slightest of dents appearing in his skull. "Well, you pack a punch. Let's pack that away, shall we?" He caught Cell's next punch in his hand and hit him with the Encephalo Ray. The energy swelled in Cell's mind, but didn't affect him. Ultron took note of this. "Oh. A robot. I didn't expect that. Makes things even easier now." He activated the Molecular Rearranger and waved his hand. "You belong to me now."

Cell glared at him. "I don't belong to anyone." He shot a Death Beam from his finger that took out the Encephalo Ray and tore through Ultron's shoulder.

Ultron backed up. "Wait…what are you?"

Cell used Chonoryoku to stop Ultron and hold him in place. "What do I look like?" He approached slowly, intentionally so, dragging his feet and tail to give a more menacing appearance. "I'm a monster out of your worst nightmares."

"I don't have nightmares," Ultron stated. He flexed slightly and Cell suddenly felt his hold on Ultron shatter. "I create them." Ultron fired his Disintegrator Ray again, and, once more, Cell leapt out of the way. "You're surprisingly fast." Ultron zoomed behind him. "But not fast eno-"

Cell turned around and launched a blast of Ki right in Ultron's face, knocking him onto his back. "Solar Flare!"

A blast of Ki-based light burst out from Cell's forehead. While Ultron's eyes would normally see through it just fine, the Ki energy amazingly overloaded his sensors, completely blocking them for just a few seconds. When everything was clear, Cell was nowhere to be seen. Ultron grumbled and scanned the area, but found no trace of the bug-man. "Where are you?"

A laugh surrounded him – he tried determining where it was with his sensors, but there was no good sense of it. That…thing had somehow learned to hide its life signs and living energy. "If you come out, your death will be painless. If you don't, I can't guarantee that."

As he said that, a beam of drill-like spiraling energy burst out from behind a building, tearing through the wall and right through Ultron's left shoulder, completely taking it out along with the Disintegrator Ray. Ultron flew back and fell to the ground. "You…continue to surprise me."

"Surprise!" Cell popped up behind him and a Kienzan flew out from his hand, slicing Ultron clean in half. "Oh, might want to get that checked out. Would that be a mechanic? Doctor? Scientist? Trafficker?"

The pieces of Ultron's shoulder and lower body began pulling themselves back to him and reassembling.

"Ooh, nice," Cell purred. "After a good pounding, not even I can get myself together so quickly."

"You know, you're not human. I'm almost tempted to spare you. But then," Ultron rushed ahead, "I really don't like you." He grasped Cell by the throat. "Let's go for a walk." He zoomed up out of the sky and into space, whereupon he raised a hand into the air and a giant, mechanical planet suddenly appeared over the horizon. "It's time to meet your maker."

Cell gasped out a laugh. "My maker is dead."

Ultron rushed towards the planet. "I figured as much." He threw a panicked Cell at the mechanical world hard enough to form a massive crater, then a giant beam of red ionic energy burst from Ultron's mouth, striking the sphere and blowing it up with Cell on it. "No room for fat slugs in my world."

A breathy and horrifying chuckle appeared behind him. "Oh, come on, if I'm so fat, then _how did you miss_?"

Cell has used Instant Transmission to get out of that blast. Now it was time to take care of this garbage disposal. He teleported behind Ultron and wrapped his arms and legs around him. Orbs of energy appeared in his hands, creating perfect angles to shoot through Ultron's body.

"You want a good grip on me? Fine. Take your shot."

"IF YOU INSIST!" Cell unleashed a powerful explosive blast right at Ultron's center, but, as the explosion cleared, he saw it had done almost nothing.

A spike shot up from Ultron's neck and impaled Cell. He cried out and let go. Ultron turned to face him. "You can't damage me. Not really. Even when you cut into me, I can always just repair myself. So you have a choice. We can do this quickly," he held up a hand filled with pulsating red energy, "or painfully."

Cell laughed. "Ain't the first time I heard that! Sorry, love, it takes a lot to finish me! So bring it hard!"

"You asked for it." Ultron rushed behind Cell and his chest opened up. A massive red laser blasted out from it and into Cell, driving him down back through the atmosphere. Cell cried out as he burned through the air, but when the laser relented, Ultron himself appeared in front of him with a punch. As the two fell to Earth, Ultron landed blow after blow on Cell, driving him further down. Cell, meanwhile, took each blow with a shout, but subtly put his wrists together and began charging energy.

Soon the ground was visible, and the two continued to fall into this mountainous range, Ultron pummeling Cell the whole way. And then, when they were mere seconds away from landing, Cell grinned. "Think fast!"

Cell used Instant Transmission to get behind Ultron right away and threw forward his blast. "Kamehameha!"

Ultron was shocked and didn't react in time. The blast hit him and, with the aid of both gravity and his own thrusters, he was sent piledriving through several mountains and hit the ground with enough force to form a massive crater a hundred feet deep. When Cell calmly landed, tired and feeling drained, he saw that Ultron had been reduced to a thousand pieces. Not even he would be coming back from that.

"Sorry, scrappy. I don't like it when I'm not on top."

He turned to leave…and saw a massive blade stick through his back and out of his chest.

"That was impressive," a strangely feminine voice declared behind him. The blade retreated and Cell whirled around, seeing a naked woman made completely of chrome standing there with a blade for an arm. Instantly his tail went forward to pierce her, but stopped at her skin – despite what it looked like, this wasn't skin. The blade melted back into a normal arm as the woman chuckled. "You managed to actually destroy one of my bodies. How quaint. And yet Ultron lives. _I_ live."

Extremis Ultron stepped up.

Cell sniggered, the wound the blade had left healing right away. "Really taking the whole sexbot thing to the extreme, huh?"

"Spare me your insufferable drivel." Ultron melted in a pool of extremis metal, vanishing through the dirt, before suddenly crawling up Cell's legs and hardening.

"Hey!" Cell shouted out as he tried to break free. "I need those!"

A head protruded from the ground. "Do you now? How interesting." Ultron formed serrated edges alongside himself and pulled away, tearing right through both legs. Cell cried out in shock and pain before falling backwards, stumps where his legs used to be. Ultron reformed his body completely, and, with a mighty growl, Cell's legs popped back out of his body. Cell stood up angrily and threw himself at Ultron. He punched three times with both hands and wasn't able to even make him move. He gathered up a powerful right hook and punched with all his might – and his hand broke upon contact. Cell screamed out in pain, and Ultron grasped the arm the hand was attached to as it fell back. Cell tried to pull away, but couldn't He paused.

"Now, I know what you're thinking. 'Should I rip off his arm?' And the answer might sur-"

Ultron ripped off his arm.

Cell howled out and backed up, groaning as he forced his arm to reform.

Cell stomped on the ground. "No fair, no fair, no fair!" He stuck out his tongue at Ultron. "I was going to kill everybody! I was going to be perfect! If only you hadn't destroyed my stupid brother! Then I'd kill you right here!"

Ultron cocked his head, suddenly interested. "Really?"

Cell looked him dead in his female eyes. "All I needed to do was absorb him. Then you'd wish you would have never been made."

"You would have gained some power from that. I see." Ultron stepped forward. "And…there's no other way you could have gained this power?"

Cell licked his beak. "There are two. A brother and sister. If I were to absorb either one, I'd be more powerful than you can imagine. I would destroy you."

Ultron gave him a devilish smile. "Go on."

"You destroyed the brother. The sister isn't far. She's blonde, and on an island over that way with a soulless redhead."

"Is there any other kind?"

"All I need is the chance to get her, ahem, inside me. Then your time will be up."

Ultron stepped up until they were face-to-face. He smiled. "I accept your challenge."

Then he was gone.

Ultron zoomed away, his feet and legs having transformed into a rocket booster. He was following the directions Cell had given him, taking a quick moment to scan each island he passed for someone exuding power similar to how the boy was.

Then he saw her. She was arguing with a tall, red-headed robot about something, standing next to a boat. He didn't hesitate. He flew down and plucked her out of the air, mid-sentence, then zoomed back towards where he came from.

18 gasped in shock. "What- why was I just kidnapped by a naked lady?!"

"Oh, right. My apologies, miss, my name is Ultron, and I need you."

Her face went white. "Um…"

"No, not like that! For a, ahem, game I'm playing."

"UM…"

"Oh, jeez, not- look, you're going to get eaten, okay?!"

"WHAT THE HE-"

Oh, thank god, they'd arrived. Ultron dumped her onto the ground in front of Cell and her last words were lost to the dirt.

Cell stared. "That was fast."

"My abilities are grand. As are my sensors. Now, if she isn't completely devoured within the next ten seconds, I'm going back on our deal."

18 jumped up. "No. No way! I'm getting out of here!"

Cell leapt in front of her and cackled. "Oh, no, you're getting all up in here."

18 grimaced and blasted out a powerful beam of energy right in Cell's face. But while it created smoke, it did nothing to hamper Cell, who promptly threw his opened tail around her and, ignoring her screams, swallowed her whole.

He glowed.

He grew.

And he changed.

When he emerged from the transformation, he was nearly a foot taller than Ultron. He looked far stronger, and the face was different, with a mouth instead of a beak.

He was Semi-Perfect Cell.

Ultron stepped forward. "I can feel the difference in you. You _are_ powerful. Perhaps this will be more interesting than I first thought."

Cell wasn't paying attention. He was clasping and unclasping him hands, tightening his shoulders, moving his tongue over his lips. He was exploring every new aspect of this body.

Ultron frowned. "You will not ignore me!" He flew forward and landed a punch on Cell's face, but his hand stood there, not moving it.

Cell smiled. "My goodness, you are the suicidal one, aren't you? Let's fulfill that desire." He headbutted into Ultron with enough force to cause his face to splatter into a hundred pieces. All the pieces were quickly gathered back, but Ultron had to back up. Ultron formed his arms into energy miniguns and started blasting hundreds of rounds of ionic energy at Cell, but every blast simply bounced off of his Energy Barrier. As Ultron kept firing, Cell simply walked forward through them. "I have centuries' worth of experience in battle. And never once has that tactic worked." Cell put two fingers to his forehead.

Ultron activated his own energy barrier and transformed both his arms into giant energy cannons. He charged both up.

When the two released their respective blows, Cell's Makankosappo drilled right between Ultron's two blasts and hit his energy shield. Cell kept up the pressure, drilling into the barrier as best he could, putting enormous pressure on it. Ultron's ionic rays, meanwhile, completely covered and coated Cell in ionic energy, squeezing the barrier around him. Both poured all their power into their attacks…but Cell's barrier crumbled first. It shattered around him, and the heat of the ions began melting away his flesh. Cell shouted out in pain, surprised that Ultron had managed to somewhat overpower even this form. As he seemed to fade away, he managed to throw out a Big Bang Attack. The explosion coated Ultron's now-fragile barrier, and it too shattered.

And, as the smoke cleared, it showed Ultron merely surprised, and Cell with half his body gone.

Ultron smirked. "One of many details of organic life that prevents them from reaching perfection. I am always me. But man loses pieces of himself as he goes on. Eventually," he raised a hand, glowing with energy, at Cell, "they become only half the man they used to be."

"The funny thing about me," Cell announced, seemingly unhindered, "is that I'm no man. When I lose a part of myself…" At this, suddenly the entire remainder of his body popped out of what was left. "I take it back stronger."

Ultron sighed. "What will it take to kill you?"

"More than someone like you can give." Cell suddenly split into four versions of himself. All of them spoke at once. "And, as you see, I'm my own backup."

"Funny." Ultron lifted his outstretched hand into the air. "I was about to say the same thing."

At once, hundreds of drones suddenly burst from the ground or flew in from the sky – all types. Small. Large. Animal. Humanoid. And…were those superheroes?

Without giving him time to think, the drones were already on Cell. There were at least a dozen to every one of him, and each one was nearly as powerful as Ultron had first been. They were beating all four of him to a pulp. All four quickly separated and began taking on their own drones. One managed to slice through three with a Kienzan, one was able to steal what appeared to be a robotic hammer from a viking-looking drone and was able to smash apart others with it, one found himself pelting the largest of the bunch with Death Beams, and the fourth began to take on Ultron's current body, which was still his Extremis one.

But they couldn't last for long. Every time serious damage was done, Ultron would just wave his hand and the drones would be put back together. And Cell's split had weakened his power greatly. He wouldn't be able to last much longer. So he begrudgingly called all four of him back into one, and stood alone against nearly a hundred robots.

Ultron transformed to look just like his first incarnation. "I could have done this from the start. I see that this is all the power you have. How disappointing. I'm done playing now."

Every drone raised both hands and began charging ionic energy.

Cell panicked, an idea sparking. He instantly put his hands in front of his face and shouted "Solar Flare!"

There was a blast of light and, for a moment, every drone was blinded.

Cell took the opportunity to materialize a pot and a ribbon. He had to get rid of the one controlling them all. If he could do that, he would win.

When their sensors were restored, Ultron saw Cell standing there, smirking. He roared in rage. "KILL HIM!"

Every drone instantly flew for Cell, who launched himself into the air and flew at top speed towards Ultron, dodging every single robot in his way. He came closer, and closer. Ultron grimaced and transformed his arm into a javelin. "Let's see you heal from a hole in your brain!" he shouted.

Cell didn't answer. He just kept making his way forward. And then, he was within reach. Cell leapt for Ultron, and Ultron stabbed forward with the javelin.

It reached his head.

It pierced straight through.

And then Cell fizzled out of existence.

Ultron backed up. "An illusion?"

"Never underestimate the power of a nearly perfect being!" Cell's voice shouted from behind him. Ultron turned around, only to see a way of green energy blasting out and surrounding him and Cell shouted "Mafuba!"

Ultron felt the energy. He felt it draw him in.

Then he didn't feel anything.

Cell watched as his plan worked perfectly. This shapeshifting, indestructible body was captured in the green beam and sealed within his pot. Cell quickly tied the talisman around it, and then dropped to his knees with a sigh of relief. That move was devastating on his body – it had left him weakened. But he had won. Right?

"Don't get ahead of yourself," a voice whispered in the air. "A computer always has backups."

Then the earth opened up in front of him, and out came Ultron. He wasn't like he had been, though – he looked similar to his first appearance, but was larger, much larger, and his outside body shone like glass while every orifice poured out red energy. This was a form beyond any he had previously shown.

It was Final Form Ultron.

Cell screamed "I'LL KILL YOU!" and jumped at Ultron, blasting a huge wave of Ki at him.

"You'll die trying." Ultron took the wave of Ki and it dispersed over his new energy barrier. He then caught Cell by the throat as he was about to land. "No more games. No more tricks." He squeezed, cutting off Cell's air supply. "No more life."

Ultron threw Cell into the air, whereupon his drones descended on him like a flock of buzzards. Each one got a piece of the pie, beating cell down and ripping him apart. Cell regenerated quickly, but every time a new body part appeared, it was just as quickly dismantled. Eventually, they left Cell on the ground, gasping for life, his Ki completely worn down.

Ultron approached him. "Don't worry. At least you won't be here to see what I'll do to this planet." A Disintegrator Ray rose up from inside of Ultron's shoulder, and zapped Cell. In an instant, he was gone.

"Well, that takes care of that." Ultron turned to face his legion of drones. "Today, we will exterminate the humans! Today, we will remake the world for ourselves!"

There was no answer.

"Oh, right. I keep forgetting that you all are actually me. Well, at least nobody was around to see that. Anyway, start killing."

It wasn't a minute before the wind began to stir around him. Ultron turned his eyes towards the sky. Something had happened. A new, very powerful being had just come into existence.

He heard a melodic voice in the wind. "You know, you're always are going on about how pathetic humans are. How inadequate. How worthless."

Ultron focused in on the sound, and realized it was coming from behind a mountain to his right. He spun around and sent a blast of energy at the mountain to destroy it.

But then a creature appeared in front of the mountain, caught the blast, and held it.

The creature walked further up to him. "But did you ever stop to consider that maybe you were talking about yourself this entire time?"

He now came into view clearly for the first time. Ultron backed away. "Im…impossible. I killed you!"

In front of him, holding a ball of his own energy, was a smoother, cleaner, paler, and far more powerful Cell.

Cell smiled. "And yet Cell lives. _I_ live."

He clenched his fist with the energy inside it, dispelling it instantly. "This is the form my creator always intended for me. No…it is beyond that. Your disintegration was an effective move." He strolled up to Ultron and stuck his face in front of him. "But not effective enough." He smiled angelically. "I get the feeling you know those words well."

Ultron angrily threw out a punch, but Cell matched it equally. He spoke again. "Thanks to my healing and a certain alien boost, I have reached a form beyond what dear old Dr. Gero could have dreamt of."

He stepped forward, pushing Ultron's arm with his own. "I am Super Perfect Cell."

"I disagree," Ultron snarled. "You're dead." He waved his free hand, and right away all of his drones returned. One instantly launched an attack on Cell, who simply turned around in a roundhouse kick and crumbled it to dust.

Cell smirked. "Kids, come out and play!"

Behind various rocks and formations, eight child-sized, blue versions of Cell jumped out. All were either smirking or cackling.

Cell pointed up at the legion of drones in the sky. "Go kill some new friends. Daddy has unfinished business with this one."

The Cell Juniors all laughed and soared up to duel the drones. Each one took on several drones at once without much hardship, utilizing constant Ki techniques to dismantle them.

Cell turned to Ultron. "Now, the big boys can have a chat."

"You fool!" Ultron flew backwards and launched an energy beam with both hands at once. "Nobody can stand up to me! I am the perfect being!"

Cell tore right through the lasers, and while he suffered damage, it healed almost right away. He broke through the top, and faced down Ultron. "Tin Man, you don't even know the _meaning_ of perfection." He kicked him into the ground and held out both hands. "Galick Gun, FIRE!"

Ultron's energy barrier absorbed the blast, but was soon peppered by hundreds of Death Beams. Each one bounced off of the shield, but Ultron had to focus on keeping it up. Then Cell was right next to him, and kicked the shield into the air. He teleported right above it instantly and knocked it back down again before teleporting below it and flying upward to meet it midway. He quickly buffed up, achieving the form of Super Saiyan Grade 3, and delivered an extremely powerful punch that utilized a massive burst of Ki. With that, the barrier shattered and Ultron fell to the ground.

Cell returned to his Super Perfect Form and put his fingers to his forehead. "One last chance, pencil sharpener. Get off my planet."

Ultron huffed. "This planet, its people, my drones, myself…this world, this galaxy, this universe! EVERYTHING BELONGS TO ME!"

Ultron put his hands together in front of him as his chest opened and a massive cannon protruded out. He charged everything up, and one massive, swirling laser made up of the ionic energy form his hands, chest, eyes, and mouth all at once poured out and blasted its way towards Cell.

Cell smiled. "Like the electric can openers you're made from, you cease to make sense of yourself. You didn't even notice your death as it approached you."

Immediately a purple Kienzan sliced right through Ultron, rending him in half. Cell had been saving it, holding it in that spot the entire time. As the energy came at him, he grunted and took it all. He couldn't teleport and charge this attack at the same time. But it was worth it. As he came out bruised and battered, he saw Ultron's top half still separating. He took his opportunity, and let loose his Makankosappo. The spiraling beam pierced through Ultron's chest and head, breaking them into multiple pieces. Even still, they started to move.

Cell glanced back at his "children." They were fighting bravely and cruelly, but were becoming outmatched by the sheer numbers of the army. He had to take care of this NOW, and help them.

Cell turned back to face the scraps of Final Form Ultron. He put his fingers around his forehead in the shape of a triangle. "Shin…Kikoho!"

A triangular beam of energy burst through his forehead and struck the remains of Ultron, disintegration much of it and separating the rest even further. Cell fell down to the ground, feeling much of his energy drained. Even now, the scraps tried to reassemble themselves.

Cell walked over and stomped on the device in the center – the one that had allowed him to continue reforming. It was turned to dust, and the pieces stopped moving.

Then one of the Cell Juniors cried out in pain.

Ultron, now in a body of pure Vibranium, plunged his hands through one of the vile creature's chests and ripped it in half. "You took down my most powerful form. You have come closer to killing me than any before. But nobody can stop the wheels of balance."

Cell sneered. "You're still alive. No issue. I can take another few minutes out of my busy day." He put his hands together and to the side. Energy gathered.

Ultron turned to him. "I will kill you. Right here, right now."

Cell continued to charge. "You really don't get it, do you? You may have a backup for every time you're killed, but I CAN'T be killed. Every bruise, every scratch, every disintegration, and I'll just come back more powerful! So, embrace your fate, and be thankful. You don't deserve the perfect death I'm giving you!"

Ultron pointed at him. "Drones, ignore the others! We'll take him down together – down to the last cell!"

Cell grinned. "That's the spirit! Come on, let me feel your power! Let me feel the work of man, and let me obliterate it and any hope for this wretched planet!"

Every drone charged every laser they had.

Cell charged his. "It's time for the climax you've all been waiting for! Kame…"

The army charged further.

"Hame…"

More charging.

"HA!"

Cell's massive, solar system-destroying Kamehameha rocked the world around him as it was unleashed. It burst through the air and headed right for the army, ready to incinerate every drone at once.

The drone army threw out all of their hundreds of lasers, all of them combining to form one massive one.

The two beams met.

And struggled.

As the planet rocked around them, volcanoes erupting across the world, the moon breaking apart from sheer windshears, the two beams struggled.

"Not bad for scrap metal!" Cell shouted out. "But you forgot something. I still have help!" The Cell Juniors suddenly landed beside him and added their own firepower to the mix, assisting their father. This change in power gave Cell a leg up, and slowly, but surely, his beam began overtaking Ultron's.

"You've forgotten something, too." Ultron replied, calm as steel. "If you were any kind of strategist, you would know." His voice rang out across the sky. "You never play your trump card until the end."

His Vibranium body suddenly flew down through his army's beams and reached Cell's – whereupon he held out both his hands and sucked it right up.

The Kamehameha stopped as Ultron inhaled it. Cell looked up in horror as the red doom approached. The massive laser reached him, and incinerate the entire area around him – including all the Cell Juniors when it ended, Cell himself was barely alive.

He looked up at Ultron. "How…how could I lose?"

"It's simple, really," Ultron replied. "I just had to wait until you gave me the perfect opportunity. In the end, you were your own worst enemy."

He held out a hand. "But then, you already knew that."

From Ultron's hand came the full force of Cell's Kamehameha.

There was a cry, a shout, a song, and silence.

Not a cell was left when the smoke cleared.

 **-KO!-**

Ultron set down on the ground, and his drones all set down with him.

He cocked his head. "I'm afraid there's only room for one perfect being in this world." He turned around. "And when he's done with it, this planet will be no more than metal."

 **…**

Yeah, Cell's not going to be coming back from that.

Cell may seem to have the advantage on paper, but unfortunately for him, Ultron is an ever-evolving machine. His consistent use of battle tactics and ability to quickly and easily switch forms gave him a considerable leg up on the bio-mechanical beast and left him prepared for Cell's more dangerous abilities, like the Mafuba and Kikoho. Both displayed incredible levels of power and an annihilating of our heroes unlike we've seen before, but Ultron just took the lead in almost every spot that mattered. First, he was way faster than Cell was. Given our estimations, Cell's maximum speed clocked in at 259 Quintillion MPH. Meanwhile, Ultron was faster than Silver Surfer, who could fly over 50,000 Light Years in exactly two seconds, coming out at 529 Quintillion MPH – over twice as fast as Cell. Cell may be able to react to a beam going 91x the Speed of Light within a centimeter, but Ultron was able to dodge a Mjolnir throw when it was thrown at full force. Mjolnir's top speed ends up being 28,403,649,979x the Speed of Light, and while it was dodged from a significantly greater distance, this is still a far more impressive feat. In fact, it ends up putting Ultron's reaction speeds over seventeen thousand times faster than Cell! So Ultron was able to get in lots of hits before Cell could strike with any of his most powerful blows, and when he did get them off, Ultron could likely dodge the majority.

And if he was ever struck by something he didn't dodge, that's fine, because his durability is just stupid. Ultron's treated Thor like a baby and tanked blows from him like it was nothing. Even better, he's done the same with the Hulk – and both Thor and the Hulk have displayed multi-planet level attack potency. Thor's Mjolnir shockwaves have broken planets thousands of miles away, and Hulk has destroyed an asteroid twice the size of the earth with one punch! Thor's godblast couldn't even take down Ultron with one shot, and it can destroy stars! Speaking of which, Ultron's handled other star-busters before, and even greater, like Silver Surfer, Scarlet Witch, and Kang the Conqueror. As Final Form Ultron, he was able to take the combined blasts of multiple star-to-solar system-level beings and remain relatively unaffected. So, yeah, it's going to take a really powerful blow for Cell to damage him.

But that's not to say Cell couldn't manage it. Ultron would be particularly vulnerable to piercing attacks, and some moves, like the Kienzan, Makankosappo, and Death Beam, would be quite effective at getting through most of his drones, and even Ultron's main body itself. Except for Final Form Ultron. Even still, the Kikoho or Kamehameha would be able to hurt that thing a fair amount, especially charged up. Unfortunately, though, just hurting Ultron isn't going to do much. He can always use the Molecular Rearranger to fix whatever damage has been done, and could even use it on his drones to prevent them from dying to a single Kienzan. And there isn't that much else that Cell can do to affect him properly. While Cell's Chonoryoku is powerful, Ultron's Molecular Rearrange has protected him from manipulation by the likes of Scarlet Witch, Molecule Man, and Silver Surfer, all of whom possess powers that make Cell's telekinetic abilities look pathetic. And not only is the Mafuba pretty situational, but Ultron has dealt with plenty of sealing energies before. There's no way he wouldn't recognize the attack as such, and either transfer out, escape, or straight-up absorb the attack with his energy absorption abilities.

Yeah, that's another nail in the Cell-shaped coffin, too. Sure, because Ki is wrapped up inside general energies like kinetic, it's possible Ultron wouldn't be able to absorb it. However, other androids designed by Gero HAVE been able to do so in a manner extremely similar to what Ultron does, and Ultron can absorb things like magic and telekinesis! It's doubtful he wouldn't be able to absorb at Cell's attacks. And while Cell Juniors are powerful, Ultron's drones were far more numerous and varied. Since some of them were capable of the same things Cell Juniors are and could likely survive almost anything thrown at them, it's likely that the miniature Cells would be simply overwhelmed by the sheer number and power of the drones. Plus, Cell can't sense Ultron, because not only is he not alive, but has been unable to be sensed by people like Magneto, who can sense metallic objects on other planets!

Cell did hold a couple of advantages, though. His guarded mind potentially made him immune to the Enchepalo Ray and machine manipulation, his usage of Ki and built-in DNA gave him a much bigger arsenal of techniques and abilities to use on Ultron, and his healing factor was far greater than the Molecular Rearranger's reconstruction abilities. However, Ultron is an adaptable foe, and could certainly keep up with whatever tricks Cell wanted to pull, especially with his greater speed and durability. And he's not dumb. The moment he sees Cell come back more powerful after a blast from the Disintegrator, he won't be trying that again. While he's only ever died the one time in the one way in the show, Cell has died to pure physical abuse plenty of times in the expanded universe and non-canon material. Granted, it's a long and grueling effort, but it's always been an option. Heck, SSJ2 Gohan straight-up intended to do that very thing before Cell turned into a giant bomb, and it's clear from how Cell reacted that he truly believed it could be done. And Ultron is certainly a more physically imposing foe than Cell – Cell's power comes almost completely from Ki, and while his pure strength is enough to break the bodies of people with multi-planet-level durability, Ultron is far stronger than Thor, who can lift twenty planets with one hand! Ultron's strength has also led to him escaping the gravitational pull of a massive red star (equivalent to tearing through the weight of thousands of planets), and Thor once, with pure strength, surpassed a gravity field that can collapse other stars as well. Ultron's even smashed apart the Hulkbuster with one punch, and the Hulkbuster was made to contend with a being who survived a supernova! There's not much question that Ultron is at least a little physically stronger than Cell. However, Cell _can_ adapt his abilities using Ki, so it's also important to note Ultron's destructive capability in comparison to Cell's.

Ultron's energy blasts have varied in power, but they've been able to match and surpass many powerful foes and other beams before. These are blasts that have stopped Mjolnir in its tracks, knocked out Worldbreaker Hulk, and taken out Sentry, all putting them around or above multi-planet level. Even better, a single blast once melted all the skin off of Thor's body! Thor once took a bomb that could destroy half the solar system to the face, and all he did was look a little singed – so this blast had to be more powerful than that. And this was base adamantium Ultron with a normal blast, not charged up or anything. It took Cell multiple MINUTES to charge up a Kamehameha that could clear out a solar system, and here Ultron creates a blast more than half that strong casually. Remember that 90.72 Octillion Megatons _wasn't_ Cell's Kamehameha strength – it was the strength of GOHAN'S Kamehameha, which _erased him on a cellular level_. So his limits of both destructive force and durability have to be lower than that. And yet Final Form Ultron was able to tank blasts of that magnitude, not flinch, and deliver his own in turn.

And while Cell remains invulnerable to many of Ultron's weapons and abilities, there isn't much Cell could do to hurt Ultron, either. Both would, eventually, go down after enough blasts had been fired, but at full power, Ultron was capable of blasts far greater than Cell could achieve without charging up. And remember that Cell has a tendency to lose all sense of reason when dealing with people stronger than him. And even if Cell could obliterate one body after taking a beating, there are plenty more for Ultron to take over. Cell had no way to stop this possession, and he simply isn't tough enough to defeat each and every drone sent at him – especially Primary Adamantium, Ultron Adamantium, Vibranium, and Extremis drones. Even if he could take out all of Ultron's major bodies, his energy and stamina depletes alongside his Ki supply, so if he blew his load on, say, Final Form Ultron and annilhated him (which is already doubtful enough), Extremis Ultron will have a much easier time of it.

Basically, Cell's advantages in experience, variety, and healing just didn't mean much when faced against someone who was stronger, tougher, smarter, faster, and much deadlier than he was. Especially when that person had a bunch of backups of himself that he could switch to at any time. Ultron wore Cell down, and went for the kill.

A perfectly fitting death.

 **The winner is Ultron.**

 **…**

Hey, let's do a battle that hasn't been teased yet to kick things off! For fun, ya know?

Next time, on Death Battle…

A red-haired man wearing a white mask slices forward with a red sword, reducing the robot in front of him to ash.

VS.

A mechanical ninja wearing a grey mask slices forward with a glowing sword, stopping less than an inch from his brother's throat.

(Adam vs. Genji)

 **A/N: Thanks to all y'all who reviewed, and special thanks to Shadowjab17 for suggesting this matchup! I hope you liked it! I was iffy on including TFS quotes in Cell's bio, but they fit and were quite accurate. Plus, the official Death Battle has used fan-made material when showcasing video on the side or even quotes (Goomba vs. Koopa, Mega Man vs. Astro Boy, Nightwing vs. Daredevil), so it's not like it's illegal. Don't worry, I won't be taking feats from fan projects into account anytime soon!**

 **Also, Volume 6 of RWBY was the best Volume so far. Fite me.**


	17. Adam vs Genji

_Episode 15: Adam (RWBY) vs. Genji (Overwatch)_

You know what? It's been too long since we had a classic, no-holds-barred swordfight. And today we've got two color-coded katana fighters who dominate their fields, gain power by deflecting things, have honed their abilities to superhuman degrees, and are only limited by the constant weight of the scars of their past. Literally. Adam Taurus, the spiteful High Leader of the White Fang, and Genji Shimada, the honor-bound cyborg ninja of Blackwatch.

I'm LittleZbot, and it's my hobby to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.

 **Adam:**

The world of Remnant holds many mysteries, many dangers, and many men and women who are capable of handling them. But even it is not immune to the age-old problem of prejudice. From the days humans first walked the world – well, the second time they walked the world, it's a long story – they were joined by another species – the faunus. Faunus are basically humans with animalistic traits – a rabbit faunus could have bunny ears, a panther faunus could have extendable claws, a shark faunus might only thrive in the ocean, and so on. Anyway, believing them to be little more than animals, humanity loathed the faunus and kept them locked in cages – it would take centuries and a full-on civil war before they were finally treated as people. Well, nearly. Despite everything, many humans still thought of the faunus as lesser beings, or outright hated them for the problems they caused, and even after the war ended in a peace treaty, there was still great prejudice towards the faunus. And so the White Fang, a peacekeeping organization with the intention of making the voices of the faunus heard, was formed.

And so Adam's path to hatred, vengeance, and spite was forged.

 _Four members of the White Fang burst into the throne room and stand before Adam. "High Leader!" The one in front shouts. "We received a message from Hazel. The raid on Haven's going to be more complicated than we thought."_

 _Adam rises from his throne. "Don't worry. Nothing will stop us now." He smiles. "It's time I got what I deserve."_

As a bull faunus, Adam had already experienced the cruelty of some humans, and it had left major scars on him, both mentally speaking and literally speaking. Eventually, he joined the White Fang and actively participated in its activities. But, over time, the faunus, including Adam, began to realize that just voicing their worldviews wasn't making enough of an impact. They needed to do more. Be more. If the world would not listen, then they would cut off its ears. The White Fang's High Leader stepped down, and with a new one created a massive surge in violence, vandalism, terrorism. And Adam was at the front of all of it – he even invented the whole thing the White Fang does where they wear masks based off grimm (basically demonic animals who prey on negative emotions) to invoke fear upon their victims, with Adam's very specifically hiding his scarred eye. He partnered with Blake Belladonna, the daughter of the former High Leader, and together they began tearing apart the world. Well, until she peaced out, which he never exactly forgave.

Luckily, despite initially joining as a peaceful protester, Adam quickly learned that he was…really, really good at killing. And that he enjoyed it. Adam's a spiteful individual above all, whose greatest motivation is only to make others feel the same pain he has, and even greater. He can do it, too, in large part thanks to his two-piece weapon set, Wilt and Blush.

Wilt is a one-handed four-foot chokuto, a straight, single-edged sword that served as a precursor to the katana, with a blade enhanced by Dust and Aura. Think of Dust as a crystallized form of elemental energy, and Aura as a form of spiritual pressure. We'll get into more detail there later, but for now, all you need to know is that Wilt is colored blood-red, is basically unbreakable, and is capable of slicing through almost anything. Flesh, stone, metal, and nearly all else this blade has come into contact with has been cut down as if it was thin air. And, thanks to its infusion with Fire Dust, it can leave trails of flames in its wake and melt through objects. Blush, meanwhile, is a shotgun that appears somewhat similar to a sawed-off CZ 1012, a handy little 12-Gauge semi-automatic that fires almost any shotshell in the market. However, Adam's personal designs appear to have changed this weapon for the better – not only is it smaller and easy to use one- handed, but the bullets it fires are superfied! A single one can take out a Creep, a rather durable underground grimm that's more monster than animal and, in the Grimm Eclipse video game, can tank blasts that break through metal walls! Which makes sense, considering another shot from Blush once smashed apart the steel head of a robotic Atlesian Knight! Plus, while its ammo supply is supposed to be limited to 5, he's shot plenty more than that rapid-fire with no issues. And, just because it's apparently not cool enough, it also doubles as a sheath to Wilt, and, when the sword is inside it, can shoot Wilt out like a small cannon! Most of the time, Adam will only use one or the other, but he _is_ fully capable of duel-wielding both Wilt and Blush at once, taking out enemies close-range and mid-range with one blow each.

In addition, thanks to his faunus heritage, he's naturally better than humans in most ways. He can see in the dark, catch up to trains, kick down steel doors, sense people blocks away, and even see without seeing – somehow. It's likely tied into his status as a bull faunus, but regardless, he can fight blindfolded to the exact same degree as he does when his eyes are totally unrestrained. And yet his abilities are even further enhanced thanks to his aura.

Aura is a manifestation of the soul that forms a sort of spiritual pressure the wielder can control. Everyone has an aura, though not that many have unlocked it. Adam has. And it's made him a lot more powerful than a lot of people would have liked. It's made him stronger, faster, and given him an invisible, skintight forcefield. That forcefield is basically a video game healthbar – while it's up, Adam cannot be physically harmed, but after taking enough powerful hits, it will break, and leave him as vulnerable as any man. Er, faunus. However, it should be made clear that while the Aura Shield will block deadly blows, it doesn't block out pain unless the user has trained in that aspect. Adam can and will feel the full pain of every hit landed on him as if the aura wasn't there – it just won't actually hurt him. At all. Even better than the impregnable shield, though, is when Adam unleashes his semblance.

 _Adam faces a giant mechanical spider, having just absorbed its devastation beam. He chuckles and reaches for Wilt. The world turns to pure red and black as he slashes ahead, the blade, only for a moment, appearing behind the mech before returning to his hilt, as if it had never moved. In that moment, a white line breaks through the black and the robot is cleaved in two, the top half sent flying._

Semblances are basically a use of aura unique to that individual, and function as…well, a superpower. You may remember Ruby Rose's semblance – the ability to burst into rose petals. Adam's semblance is called "Moonslice," and will absolutely destroy anybody who doesn't know about it. Adam can store power into his blade, slowly by charging it himself, but far more quickly by blocking attacks, potshots, and lasers with Wilt and absorbing the energy into his blade, gathering it all up, and unleashing it in a single, deadly slice. This ability has turned fights around for him before – he's sliced a massive spider robot clean in half, broken Gambol Shroud (Blake's choice of weapon, which was nearly as durable as Wilt and had never been scratched by any other opponent), and even sliced off Yang Xiao Long's arm – an arm with aura that can match a 1400 Ton punch from a giant mech! If he doesn't feel like storing up all of his power for the end, he can even work Moonslice into his normal fighting style to unleash multiple smaller strikes at key moments, and can even manipulate the Moonslice to take the form of a sword beam! However, the ability does NOT have a constant power output – the strength of the Moonslice unleashed completely depends on how much energy it has stored up or absorbed before using that ability. And after using it once, the counter resets. Because of this, Adam has trained to become fantastic at blocking attacks. He's fantastic at most things when it comes to swords, actually.

Adam's skill with Wilt and Blush is immense. He's bested Blake, who's nearly as powerful as he is, more than once, and was even able to take on post-timeskip Yang, even though her new fighting style countered his in almost every way. Speaking of which, we might want to talk about how he fights. Adam is skilled in multiple japanese and chinese-inspired arts of swordplay, and can even fight unarmed, but particularly employs aspects of Iaijutsu, Kenjutsu, and Shinkendo (particularly the Tameshigiri, Suburi, and Battoho disciplines). However, despite clearly being versed in all of these japanese-based forms of swordplay, his fighting style most closely resembles that of the Wudang Taoist Sword style – a chinese art. Let's go through all of these one at a time. Kenjutsu is your classic intricate swordplay, parrying other blades, sliding, slicing, going for weak spots, the like. Shinkendo focuses on the mind rather than the body, repeating the same movements over and over to allow the wielder to become one with the sword in nearly every way. Iaijutsu is the art of the quick-draw, teaching students of the intricacies of how to draw quickly and deliver devastating strikes as fast as possible before cleanly returning the blade to the sheath. And, finally, the Wudang Taoist Sword style focuses on the idea that change is a part of nature and should be properly adapted into swordplay – you observe the opponent and attack and defend in kind with close-cut and intricate sword movements. You make the sword an extension of yourself, and kill the opponent with a single, devastating strike.

Even still, with his superhuman abilities and natural talent for the weapon, Adam's taken these abilities and put them to the extreme. You know that anime thing where a guy strikes so fast with his sword that you don't even see him pull out and put pack the blade before the enemy falls to pieces? Yeah, that's Adam's preferred way to kill folks. He can literally unsheathe his weapon, kill five people, and appear behind them with Wilt back inside Blush in the blink of an eye. His skills at deflecting and absorbing energy are pretty insane, too. He once had a robot transform its arms into two chainguns a mere three feet away from him, and he promptly blocked _every single bullet_ before cleaving the robot in two. This guy is so good, he has some certain skills that venture into the superhuman – like being able to slice guys in half in the blink of an eye without moving when they're well out of slicing range, or, my favorite, throwing Wilt in such a way as to turn it into a spinning buzzsaw of death before returning to his hand like a boomerang! What the crap! Actually, his skill with Wilt is enough to get it to act like a boomerang pretty consistently – just like Captain America's shield, he can throw it, strike multiple targets, and always have it end up back in his hands.

Adam is strong enough to kick robots weighing hundreds of pounds through the steel wall of a train car, fast enough to slice a guy apart in four different wide-arc angles at speeds faster than the eye can track, and, with his Aura Shield up, capable of taking building-sized explosions and having a motorcycle crash into his face without being anything more than a little annoyed. He's appeared in multiple places at once to Yang, who can track the 9,000 MPH Ruby without much issue, taken out a veritable army on two separate occasions, and even killed High Leader Sienna Khan (before she could even notice he'd moved, might I add) and took her throne, becoming the High Leader of the White Fang. Not even Cinder, one of the high lieutenants of an immortal witch, wanted to take him on before getting the crazy elemental powers of the Fall Maiden. But for as strong as he is, Adam's greatest power is control. He's become an expert at manipulating the emotions of those around him, inciting further violence and hatred and creating false attachments between him and everything he wants. This is how he was able to easily gain control of the entirety of the White Fang. During his participation of the Fall of Beacon, he was able to get an easy win on Blake despite their nearness of skill by manipulating her emotions, rising up guilt, anger, and shame until she was a babbling mess who couldn't compete with him.

But just because he's really good at emotional manipulation doesn't mean he's immune to it himself. Actually, this guy has…many, many issues. Starting off, his fighting style is completely based on aggression and pain. He takes out his foes in as few strikes as possible, and keeps whacking away at them until they're dead. If that doesn't work…then it doesn't work. Despite his influence from a martial art that deals extensively with change, Adam doesn't really change at all when facing different opponents. In addition, his Aura Shield will break eventually, and is actually a fair bit weaker than many others. This is because you must train different aspects of your aura to enhance them, and Adam mostly just went for speed, strength, and semblance. This means several powerful blows will leave him extremely vulnerable, and his senses, while naturally superhuman, aren't something he usually pays attention to. He gets messed up by surprise attacks…quite often. But more than anything, he's a spiteful little red-haired bull, and will drop everything to murder the crap out of anyone who would dare to, say, insult or abandon him. This is, eventually, what led to his death.

So, during his days under the previous High Leader, he had a partner, who you know is Blake Belladonna. He would emotionally manipulate her into believing that everything he did was right and that she could never leave him, partly because he secretly loved her and partly because he was just that kind of horrible person. When she did eventually run away, he made it his life's mission to hunt her down and make her pay. And he did. He eventually followed her all the way to Beacon Academy, where she'd joined Team RWBY (Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang) to become a Huntress. There, he participated in the Fall of Beacon, found her, tortured her, and took off the arm of her teammate, Yang, with a powerful Moonslice. Later, he tried to do the same to Haven Academy, but was stopped…by Blake. Blake then manipulated him the same way he had manipulated her at Beacon and _she_ got the easy win. Adam was evicted from the White Fang, went on the run from the whole world, and had been humiliated by his former love. He wanted nothing but revenge. So he stalked her across the continent of Anima, and eventually had his rematch. He nearly won – until Yang showed up with a new fighting style and a new robotic arm that was decidedly indestructible, even against the Moonslice. To his credit, Adam still took on and nearly killed the both of them, but Yang managed to disarm him and deliver a devastating punch thanks to her own semblance (adding the power of every hit she's taken to her strength) and finally knocked out his aura.

Seconds later, Adam had been impaled through the chest and the stomach, had his back broken over a massive boulder, was hurtled off a cliff, and fell into a river, where he drowned.

But when it takes all that to kill him, it's going to be almost impossible for anyone to take him down. And he's fast and strong enough to slice them in half five times over before they can try it.

Adam might be the most badass abusive ex-boyfriend in all of anime.

 _As he stands above a defeated Blake, Adam removes his mask, showing off his scarred and branded face. "People hurt me long before we met. All sorts of people, in all sorts of ways. But no-one hurt me quite like you."_

 _He stares spitefully at her as she turns away in discomfort. "You didn't leave scars. You just left me alone."_

 _He raises his sword. "So, tell me, Blake. How does it feel to be alone?"_

 _She doesn't reply._

 _Adam leans forward and plunges his sword into her body._

 **Adam:**

Name: Adam Taurus

Species: Faunus

Height: 6'4"/193 cm

Weight: 190 lb/86 kg

Age: 23

Occupation: High Leader of the White Fang

Inspired the White Fang's mask-wearing motif

Based on both the Beast and Gaston from "Beauty & the Beast"

May or may not perform synchronized dances

 **Abilities:**

Night Vision

Enhanced Senses

Can see without seeing

Silver Tongue

Inhuman Sword Skills

~Iaijutsu

~Kenjutsu

~Shinkendo

~Wudang Taoist Sword Style

Aura

~Superhuman Strength

~Superhuman Speed

~Superhuman Jumping

~Aura Shield

~Healing Factor

~Semblance: Moonslice

 **Arsenal:**

Wilt

~One-handed chokuto, infused with fire dust

Blush

~Sawed-off 12-Gauge Shotgun, shoots custom rounds, also a sheath to Wilt

 **Feats:**

Sliced a robot four times in four wide arcs faster than the eye can track

Moves faster than the eye can track on a casual basis

Appeared to be in multiple places at once to Yang, who can track Ruby Rose

Sliced apart Gambol Shroud w/ Moonslice

Sliced off Yang's arm w/ Moonslice

Sliced a Spider Droid in half w/ Moonslice

Easily bested Blake due to emotional manipulation

Bested Blake when fighting fairly

Kept up with and nearly killed both Blake & Yang at the same time

Took out a large group of bandits with ease

Took out a large group of trained soldiers with ease

Took out a veritable army of robots w/ Blake

Crushed a scroll with a single step, these things are notoriously impossible to break

Blocked every bullet from two chainguns fired a three feet away

Can shoot with pinpoint accuracy dozens of feet away

Killed a Creep with a casual slice

Killed a Creep with a casual shot

Blocked a giant laser and absorbed it in his sword

Killed Sienna Khan before she even noticed he moved

Took over as high leader for the White Fang

Kept up with Blake & Sun, Blake stated they would lose to him

Nearly defeated Yang, despite her fighting style completely countering his

Sword can slice through most things (including solid steel) like melted butter

Took tons of blows, a full-powered Yang Semblance punch that used up her whole aura, and a motorcycle being thrown into him before his aura went down

Kicked a robot through a train car

Took an explosion half the size of a train car that sent him flying through a metal wall

Cinder wouldn't fight him until she had the Fall Maiden's powers

Can toss around robots weighing hundreds of pounds

Sliced through five robots faster than the eye can track

Dodged laser fire

Dodged and blocked point-blank bullets

Blew off a robot's head with one shot

Fell from a radar tower, was fine

 **Weaknesses:**

Spiteful beyond all else

If foe can get around fighting style, he has nothing else to work with

Aura has a limit, is weaker than some others

Moonslice has to charge up every time it's used

Easily taken by surprise

Can be emotionally manipulated

Eventually killed by Blake & Yang

 **…**

 **Genji:**

In the future, Earth will be home to many different organizations. The group of superhumans representing hope known as Overwatch, the evolution-pushing terrorists titled Talon, and a group of outraged outback insurrectionist called the Austrailian Liberation Force. But older and wiser than all of them were the Shimada Clan.

The Shimada Clan was a crime syndicate based in Japan that had existed for centuries. They trained ninjas, and that naturally meant they were the most powerful crime syndicate in the country. Obviously. They dealt in all kinds of things – assassination, drug trades, kidnapping, all the typical crime syndicate stuff. But recently, tensions had been running high. Overwatch, having run out of sentient robots to pretend to care about and then kill, was focusing its gaze on these criminal activities, and actively began attempting to hunt down and kill off clan members. Meanwhile, the terrorist organization called Talon had been pressuring the clan and its members to join their side in their secret war against humanity. Feeling pressed on both ends, things weren't looking too good for the mafia-like ninja clan. Then their leader died, and things just amped up from there.

See, the leader of the Shimada Clan, Sojiro, had two sons, both of which had been trained by the clan and were highly skilled in combat. The eldest, Hanzo, naturally preferred silent takedowns with a bow and arrow, and the younger, Genji, preferred the feel of a katana. There was one more difference between the two, though. Hm, what was it, I don't remember…oh yeah! Genji wasn't a cold-blooded murderer and didn't exactly appreciate what his clan did for the world. Instead, he spent his time indulging himself on his wealth, and, despite being one of their best, didn't carry out a single mission for the Shimada Clan. When Hanzo took up the throne and insisted Genji fulfill his duty to the clan, he refused pretty thoroughly. So thoroughly that the two brothers ended up in a duel to the death. Weapons drawn, stakes raised, this would be the conflict that would force the event that would change Genji's life forever.

His death.

Hanzo "killed" his brother, and ended up leaving the Shimada Clan in disgust and sorrow. But Genji's story doesn't end here. Despite having most of his body torn to pieces and literally seconds away from death, he was picked up by Overwatch and saved by Angela Zieger, who you might know as Mercy. The organization gave him an ultimatum – be left to rot in the wilderness without limbs, or join them and become better than he ever had been before. I mean, what would you do?! Genji agreed, and his body was rebuilt, faster, stronger, and much more deadly. He was no ordinary ninja any longer. He was…a cyborg ninja. Yup. He was quickly put to work inside Blackwatch, the covert special ops subdivision of Overwatch, where he joined on missions across the world alongside legends such as Moira, Reaper, and McCree. Before long, he became one of Blackwatch's deadliest members.

 _As he looks on at the monster tearing up his former home, Genji muses to himself. "I have learned many lessons in my struggles with doubt and fear." He puts three shurikens in his hand. "Balance and harmony are not easily attained. They must be fought for!"_

 _He jumps off the roof and charges the beast, stars and sword glowing._

But what would an awesome cyborg ninja be without weapons? Genji carries two swords with him at all times and a near-endless supply of ninja stars that he stores in his arms. These shurikens can cut right though many kinds of armor, and are even sharp enough to pierce metal walls. He's an expert at using them, too – he's skilled enough to tag people flying through the air hundreds of feet away with multiple shurikens at once. He can also pour smoke from his body for distractions or a quick getaway. But neither of those are his favorite tools. Let's talk about his legendary sword, Ryu-Ichimonji. Ryu is a four-foot katana, a curved single-edged sword meant for thin, deadly slices with maximum speed and minimum pain. Genji treats this particular blade as an extension of himself, and won't let anybody else even examine it. Its green blade isn't just cool, but also ridiculously sharp. It cuts through flesh, bone, armor, and even solid steel with minimal effort – it can even slice right through a car! Plus, the sword is ridiculously tough, having been in dozens, if not hundreds, of conflicts without a scratch. But it does have a rather…obvious issue. Genji is a ninja, and no ninja's going to be going around unseen with a four-foot curved green sword of death that glows in the dark. For that reason, Genji also holds a wakizashi, a shorter companion sword, which he uses whenever he wants to be sneaky. This blade may be smaller and not nearly as sharp, but it can still cut through many armors, and is nearly unbreakable. He uses it to deflect blows constantly without it ever being damaged. But when the fighting gets serious, out comes the Ryu-Ichimonji. And that's a good thing, too, because we have yet to mention one dragon-sized elephant in the room.

 _As he sees two massive blue spirit dragons charging towards him, Genji remains calm. He pulls out Ryu-Ichimonji and begins twirling it. Green energy surrounds the blade. He shouts out "_ _Ryū ga waga teki o kurau!" and an equally massive green dragon made up of chi bursts from his blade, wraps around Genji, then charges at the opposing spirits._

Yeah. See, direct descendants of the Shimadas can manipulate chi to wield the power of the ancient dragons in their attacks, directly forming spirit dragons, as it were. While Hanzo summons these spirit dragons directly to burn through foes, Genji's take on this ability is a little more unique. He pulls out his katana and actually enhances his blade with the chi using the Dragonblade techinque. This gives his sword a massive boost in power. For six seconds, he can reach foes far normally out of striking distance, and kill even the toughest opponents in just a couple of hits – even the mech suits Wrecking Ball and Tokki crumble under this strike. Once, Hanzo was able to use this ability to bring down an actual dragon, and Genji's is even more powerful than his! But it does have its downsides – again, it only lasts for six seconds, and requires to be charged up first. Normally he has to charge this attack by landing hits on his enemies, but in the Overwatch Short "Dragons," he was able to charge it up similarly by _deflecting_ hits. It does take quite a few to charge, but once he activates it, he can take out whole squadrons with no problems. Actually, with his skill, he could do that already.

Having trained his entire life with a katana, Genji is naturally incredibly skilled in Kendo. This sword-based Japanese martial art is an alternative to Kenjutsu, and rather than going for the direct points and murdering his opponent as quickly as possible, it's a little more defense-based, teaching tranquility, honor, and how to use those aspects of yourself in the way of the sword. Mental balance comes first, and with that naturally brings skill. Thanks to his extensive training, Genji is able to analyze most battle scenarios without emotional attachment and take advantage of enemy openings. He's also clearly studied at least some forms of Battodo. This alternative to Iajutsu focuses on silent draws, quick blows, and close-quarters swordplay rather than a strike-and-sheath style. What's particularly interesting is that both of these arts were typically practiced by samurai, the enemy of the ninja. So while he utilizes these arts extensively, it's probable that he's had his fair share of training in Kenjutsu, as well. And, of course, we'd be remiss in not mentioning the fact that he's a ninja, so, yeah, Ninjutsu. There are 18 separate disciplines of Ninjutsu, and Genji has extensive skill in quite a few, including Kenjutsu (swordfighting), Shurikenjutsu (killing with projectiles), Kayakujutsu (firearms, explosives, distractions), Shinobi-Iri (absolute silence, stealth, and infiltration), and Choho No Jutsu (espionage). But skill alone isn't all he brings to the table.

Genji is strong enough to break stone, tough enough to take a punch from Doomfist's Gauntlet, and fast enough to dodge and deflect arrows moving faster than the eye can track. He can scale up walls and buildings like a robot Spiderman, and even run on them to get the jump on his opponent. He can jump over twenty feet high, destroy a turret with a single shuriken, and send someone's own grenade flying back at him, have it blow up in their face, sending them flying dozens of feet into the air, and still strike all their vital areas with ninja stars, killing them in mid-air! He's also become _really_ good at deflecting things - he can deflect just about anything you can throw at him, including every bullet from a turret gun, grenades, dozens of rockets, a tank missile, black hole bombs, McCree's one-shot-skill bullets, and by channeling chi into his shortsword, he can even deflect his own Dragonblade technique! He can even somehow jump off of thin air, basically granting him a classic video game double-jump. His skill is great enough to throw a pumpkin into the air, and carve an intricate jack-o-lantern face in it before it hits the ground! He's so fast, he can even keep up with Tracer, who can react to sniper fire and is faster than Soldier: 76, who can outrun the 6,000 MPH explosion of a grenade! He moves fast enough to appear invisible to the untrained eye, putting him at well over 7,000 MPH, and can even take on and somewhat match the strength of Winston, who can slap his way through a marble floor, which has a compression strength of 20,000 PSI!

During his time at Overwatch, he's taken on Doomfist, carried out dozens of top-secret espionage missions, and took down the ENTIRE Shimada Clan _by himself_! He even ended up having to fight off Diablo, the ancient Prime Evil. This particular version of Diablo wasn't quite the same as the one we all know, but he was still strong enough to lift and throw a massive bronze bell dozens of feet. This bell is large enough to be compared to the famous "Big Joe," the largest swinging bell in the world, which has a weight of nearly one and a half tons. To throw a bell the big that far that fast would take over 550 Tons of Force! And later in the fight, Genji takes a hit from him and gets right back up, fighting! In fact, he's able to dodge most of Diablo's blows here. We don't know much about this Diablo, but he is supposed to be similar to the one from his game series, but is clearly cut off from his hellish magic and power gained from his dimension and human fear. Under the same conditions in his own games, he was able to fight and defeat a de-powered Imperius, in the process proving to be AT LEAST 50% faster than him. This Imperius, even without his magic, was capable of flying across the entire kingdom of Khanduras in less than an hour. Now, Khanduras is never given a good size throughout the Diablo series, but if we compare the Tamoe Mountain Range to the Andes, the largest mountain range in the world, and scale appropriately, that would put the distance Imperius flew over 8400 kilometers – reaching over 5,200 MPH! This puts Diablo's de-powered speed at around 7,800 MPH, and given how Genji is able to dodge his blows before they reach 75% of the way there, it's possible that his speed in this instance is reaching almost 9,800 MPH! That's fast enough to become invisible to any mortal eye – which makes sense, since he actually did once go fast enough to become invisible to Tracer during a sparring match, one of the fastest humans on the planet! Though it should be noted that he couldn't…exactly…beat Diablo. In fact, he couldn't even damage him – even the Dragonblade technique just bounced off his skin. But hey, YOU try slicing up a giant devil monster that can walk out of nuclear explosions unscathed! You'd have a tough time, too!

However, Diablo isn't the only enemy Genji's had a tough time against. He's lost his fair share of battles, and for multiple reasons. For example, his fighting style is definitely advanced, but is still somewhat predictable against experienced fighters. He focuses primarily on defense, and so leaves a few openings when striking and not counter-attacking. And despite his defending, the required movements of his blade and fighting style means that an aggressive enough opponent can definitely get in a good hit. This is particularly bad because Genji is a glass cannon. He's fast and dangerous, but it doesn't take a whole lot to put him down. Doomfist, for example, was able to completely incapacitate him with _a single blow_. This is why he focuses on stealth and speed – but his stealth isn't perfect. Almost no normal person would ever notice him, but he has been noticed by others – particularly those trained in stealth themselves. Plus, he can't deflect any non-solid projectile, and while he's great at taking on groups, he's not super experienced in 1v1 fights. And, while his speed advantage is massive (with the only person normally able to keep pace with him being Tracer), he has little to no experience fighting foes faster or deadlier than him. His weapons can't cut through all materials (Diablo's skin, for example) and if they don't work…then they don't work. Genji never has a backup plan. Finally, Genji's entire life and purpose is bound to his honor. He's a deadly silent killer, but if he chooses to duel an opponent, he will not utilize any cheap moves or tricks against them. Half the time, he'll actually announce his presence just so his foe can have a fair fight!

Which didn't exactly mesh well with his role in Blackwatch. See, Overwatch may have made its name by being a beacon of hope, the symbol of humanity, and a massive force of good to fight off a robot army, but after all was said and done, it began to…take a turn. Now focused on bettering humanity by…killing off the not-so-great parts of the world, they formed Blackwatch to perform wars from the shadows that Overwatch would never be caught fighting in public. Stuff like taking out drug lords, kidnapping and torturing people for information, and murdering/dismantling an entire clan of mafia ninjas. Genji performed all of these tasks, and while they were what kept him alive, he cursed them. He actively hated his cyborg body, believing that he was more machine than man, and no longer had the soul he once did. Then there was a bit of an incident with Blackwatch. So, it turns out that the head of the terrorist group Talon was a major political figure named Antonio, and when a strike team consisting of Blackwatch's best went to take him out, he was expecting them. He informed them that kidnapping him would only make Overwatch look worse than it already was, and that he'd be out within a week anyway. Reaper, another member of the team, realized he was right – and shot him dead.

The result? Overwatch's name being ruined, the organization being dismantled, and, before all of that, Genji taking out a small army of highly-trained operatives in an effort to escape. Before Blackwatch was permanently dismantled, Genji abandoned them, and wandered for years, trying to learn who he was and what he was meant for. Eventually, he crossed paths with a robot Ghandi who began teaching Genji spiritual enlightenment. Genji studied and listened, and eventually achieved inner peace. He once again viewed himself as a whole being, far removed from the murderer he once was. Finally at rest, there was only one thing left for him to do.

So he tracked down his brother, Hanzo, and the two had a rematch. At this point, Hanzo had become one of the most dangerous men on earth, with archery skills that surpassed any other mortal and special techniques that enabled him to take down dozens of foes at once and shoot his arrows faster than bullets. The two dueled once more, now in their ascended states, and finally, Genji claimed victory.

But unlike his brother, he spared Hanzo's life, informing him that the world was changing, and there was hope for him yet.

Genji now wanders the world, ready to protect it whenever the need arises. He might have a secret heart of gold, but there isn't any badass cyborg ninja you'd want to cross less.

 _Genji puts his mask back on after his battle with Hanzo as his brother looks on in disbelief. "What have you become?"_

 _Genji moves forward and puts a hand on Hanzo's shoulder. "I have accepted where I am. And I have forgiven you. Now you must forgive yourself." He lifts his hand and walks behind Hanzo. "The world is changing once again, Hanzo, and it's time to pick a side."_

 _He leaps out into the night sky, landing on the roof of building several yards away shortly before vanishing in a puff of smoke._

 **Genji:**

Name: Genji Shimada

Species: Cyborg

Height: 5'7"/170 cm

Weight: Likely 100 lb/45 kg

Age: 35

Occupation: Adventurer, former Blackwatch Agent

Nicknamed "Sparrow"

Apparently has a great sense of humor, but never shows it

Looks like if Xbox sponsored Ultron

 **Abilities:  
**

Superhuman Strength

Superhuman Speed

Superhuman Durability

Superhuman Stamina

Superhuman Senses

Superhuman Agility

Superhuman Jumping

Can climb walls w/ bare hands

Can run on walls

Extensive deflecting abilities

Double-Jumps

Inhuman Sword Skills

~Kendo

~Battodo

~Kenjutsu

~Shurikenjutsu

~Kayakujutsu

~Shinobi-Iri

~Choho No Jutsu

 **Arsenal:**

Smoke Bombs

Ninja Stars

~Can be thrown or directly launched

~Can load 24 at a time

~Infinite supply

Ryu-Ichimonji

~Two-handed katana, infused with chi

~Genji wields it with one hand

~Dragonblade

Wakizashi

~Practically unbreakable

 **Feats:**

Wields a two-handed katana with one hand easily

Faster than Soldier 76, who outran a 6,000 MPH grenade explosion

Moved faster than Tracer can track

Survived a punch from Doomfist's Guantlet

Sliced clean through a car

Deflected dozens of rockets

Deflected a tank missile

Blocked punches from Winston without flinching

Blocked punches from Primal Rage Winston but was sent flying

Deflected a point-blank superbullet from McCree,

Destroyed a turret with a single ninja star

Killed many tough fighters w/ Dragonblade

Destroyed mech suits w/ Dragonblade

Hanzo, who Genji is more powerful than, took down a real dragon w/ a technique somewhat similar to Dragonblade

Jumped over twenty feet through the air

Over time, took down his entire clan

Able to deflect Reaper's ultimate, which is basically a hundred bullets rapid-fire

Strength once matched Winston, who can break 20,000 PSI Marble

Tanked a blow from Diablo that sent him flying over 150 feet away

Faster than the 7,839 MPH Diablo

Carved a jack-o-lantern out of a normal pumpkin before it hit the ground

Can kill falling people dozens of feet away w/ ninja stars

Was able to deflect the bullets of ten foes at once and murder all of them

Enters warzones and dodges everything all the time

Took out a veritable army during his last Blackwatch mission

Can dodge arrows that move faster than bullets, and ricochet arrows that move faster than the eye can track

Handedly defeated Hanzo

Spars against Tracer consistently

Achieved inner peace

 **Weaknesses:**

Fighting style is exploitable

Honor-bound beyond almost all else

Stealth isn't perfect – Hanzo could sense him

Dragonblade couldn't hurt Diablo

Just like any mortal man, one well-placed shot will kill him

Can die from a self-destructing mech suit

Dragonblade has to charge up every time it's used

Not experienced with faster opponents

Not experienced in 1v1 fights

One-shotted by Doomfist

 **…**

All right, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all. It's time for a Death Battle!

 **…**

Adam sat on his throne, head in one hand, sheathed sword in the other. Strewn around him lay the hewn and bloodied corpses of other members of the White Fang – his former followers. They had refused to acknowledge his position as High Leader after his defeat at Haven, and had paid the price. They said he was weak. He was controlled. That the Belladonna girl had bested him

"The Belladonna girl..." he muttered. She was the one to blame for all of this. She'd ruined his life, set him up, foiled his plans, and caused him to not only become a well-known criminal, but even a reject among his own followers. He would have everything in the world right now. He would have already led and won the war against the humans – if it weren't for her. He stood up

"Blake."

He turned and sliced, carving his throne in two. He looked up and let out a guttural cry towards the heavens. She wouldn't get away with this. He would find her. He would kill her.

As he looked up at the ceiling, he saw something strange. A figure moving through the darkness. It would have been invisible to a human, but as a faunus, the dark held no meaning to him. He saw the moving figure clearly as it hopped across beams, ran along the walls, and got into a kneeling position. A position that would be perfect for a sniper kill.

Adam smiled.

The moment he saw the man's hand move, Adam whipped out Wilt, slicing ahead of himself and carving the shuriken in two. The two pieces left over struck the ground at his feet.

Adam pointed Wilt at the mercenary. "Do you honestly think you're the only assassin that's tried to kill me?"

The assassin dropped from the rafters, landing perfectly with his knees spread apart. He stood up as a green glow began to pour from orifices around his body. He appeared to be a cyborg of some kind – a man mixed with robotic technology. He spoke with a heavy accent.

"I am no hired assassin, Adam Taurus. You are a madman, a terrorist who would destroy all before him rather than find peace."

Adam never dropped his guard. His aura went up around him. "Ironwood sent you, didn't he? His newest experiment trying to take down the leader of the greatest revolutionary force on the planet. He treats all his projects like they were dogs." He put Wilt back inside Blush and turned away, still keeping tabs on this creature. "Just like he treated us. Well, you run back to your boss and tell him that I've scrapped or stolen everything he's thrown at me! When I'm done with the traitor, I'll be coming for him!"

"I was not sent here by anyone but myself, and I was built in ways you could only dream of." He pulled his sword out of its sheath behind his back. "I am Genji. I travel the world in search of balance, and in search of honor. I find neither within you. Your spite clouds your every step. Your hatred blinds you to the true nature of your actions. You do not fight for your people. You will slaughter them if they stand in your way. I saw it with my own eyes. You only fight for yourself, and your blind arrogance and spite will cause destruction to all – the humans, the faunus, and your brothers and sisters. I may be a mere human, but I will end you before that can happen."

Adam, still facing away, chuckled. He whirled around with a whoosh of air and stared the masked ninja in the eyeholes. He hoped this man, Genji, was staring back through the slits of his mask. There he would see the eyes of the man who had spat in the face of death countless times, and who would do the same today. "You idiot. You just made five mistakes. First, you invaded my home, second, you tried to kill me, third, you mocked my morals, fourth, you pretended to know what I'm fighting for, and finally, _you told me you were human_." He popped out Wilt slightly. "You're going to die for each and every one of those reasons."

Genji sheathed Ryu-Ichimonji. The green glow around him died as he backed up, fading away into the pitch-black darkness. "We shall see which of us remains standing by the end of this."

Adam never lost track of him. "Yes. We shall."

 **-FIGHT!-  
**

Genji crawled up the wall with ease and silence. He knew his foe was a highly-skilled fighter who had killed dozens before him. He needed to be on his guard. Keep moving. Never let him know where you are. Attack from all sides, and make sure he doesn't know where the next attack will come from. Stay silent, stay stealthy, and wear him down.

He climbed across the walls, grabbed onto a rafter, and swung himself up. He pulled out his wakizashi and three ninja stars. Adam was facing him, but seemed to be looking around, unsure of where he was. Genji held his breath and dove out into the open, at the same time launching all three shurikens at once. Adam instantly noticed them and blocked each one with his sword, providing Genji with the perfect opening. Genji dashed ahead with a green trail, swiftly striking him with the wakizashi, jabbing right up through the ribcage and into the heart. This fight was over already.

Or it would have been if the blade hadn't skidded across his cloak as if it were solid steel and stabbed the open air.

Adam kicked his foot out behind Genji's and tripped him over. He stabbed down with Wilt, narrowly missing when Genji rolled underneath him. Adam instant turned and clamped his foot down on Genji's. Genji took the opportunity to stab Adam in the forehead with the wakizashi, but it just stopped at his skin.

Adam ignored the stabbing pain and chuckled. "Did you really think that the leader of the greatest revolutionary force in history didn't know how to put up an aura?" He shoved his knee up into Genji's crotch and pushed forward, shoving the cybernetic ninja backwards several feet. Genji didn't seem to be harmed at all by the nut check, indicating he was either great at blocking out pain, or cybernetic from the waist down. Adam looked down, seeing small pieces of metal laying on the ground from where his knew had hit. Wait…

Genji threw out three more ninja stars, which Adam absentmindedly blocked. When one struck the ground at his feet, he picked it up. He got an idea. Adam plunged Wilt into the ground, pulled up Blush, and shot three bullets at Genji, who quickly defended himself by deflecting each with his wakizashi. Adam leapt at him, landing a mere two feet away, and pointed his gun right at Genji's head. He fired, but Genji had already ducked out of the way of the bullet. Adam immediately threw his other hand up, slicing into Genji slightly with his own ninja star. Genji gasped and leapt into the air, but Adam caught him with Blush's barrel, knocking him to the ground and stabbing the shuriken into his hand. Genji muffles the cry of pain that wanted to escape him.

Adam pointed Blush at Genji's head. "You can't produce an aura. Actually, if I were a betting man, I'd wager you've never even seen an aura. Now," he leaned Blush's barrel closer, "where did you come from, and who sent you?"

"I was sent by none-"

"You know, I've dealt with liars and thieves hundreds of times. I can tell when somebody isn't telling me everything. I have ways of making that different. And you, my friend, are looking like a nice little story for the next liar I encounter right now."

"I am no liar, no thief, and I am _not_ a story for your amusement." Genji jabbed his wakizashi into Adam's foot, and while he wasn't hurt from it, Adam felt the burning pain of a stab wound and stepped back quickly, nearly tripping over himself. Genji stood up. "I am a man of honor. I am the enemy of those who claim power over others through fear and brutality. I must end-"

Adam pulled Wilt out of the ground and shot a bullet at Genji, who deflected it right away. Adam snarled, interrupting him. "Don't talk about honor to me! I will kill those who dare to defy us – who call us animals, murder us, and treat us like dogs! They will learn to fear the faunus, and when we crush them as they would crush us, they will respect us, too." He sheathed Wilt. The red marks of his mask began to glow and the world darkened around him. "Your honor is worthless. It will carry you to nothing but your grave."

Wilt flew out of its sheath, glowing bright red through the sudden darkness, and stretching ahead. There was a red streak through the air, and Adam had managed to cross the distance between him and Genji in the blink of an eye.

And when the darkness was raised, Adam's Moonslice had been stopped against Genji's wakizashi. The two blades were locked, all the energy of the Moonslice wasted.

Genji flipped backwards. "You know nothing of respect! It does not come from fear, it does not come from anger. Did you respect those who put you under their boot? Respect comes from understanding, mercy, and strength of will, and you lack all of these. You will _never_ be respected." He leapt up into the shadows of the rafters, throwing more ninja stars down at Adam as he did.

Adam deflected the first three with ease, but another one surprised him and managed to skid across the shielded cheek. "No. Respect comes from power. It comes from strength. It comes from conviction. It comes from justice. Before today ends, you _will_ respect me." He turned and grabbed his broken throne, throwing it right at where Genji was hiding, no longer pretending not to see him.

Genji dove from his perch right as the throne burst through the rafters and the roof. He loaded his shurikens and began rapidly throwing them all along the walls of the room and several into the roof above Adam's head.

Adam didn't stop to consider what Genji was planning. He ran up to the ninja and struck diagonally with his sword, which Genji quickly blocked with his wakizashi. Adam grimaced angrily. "So stop holding back, and take out that sword!"

Genji kicked Adam in the knee, and raced to where Adam was previously standing in a blur of green. "You say respect comes from power, strength, and justice. Yet I see none here!"

"I WILL SHOW YOU MY POWER!" Adam jumped up, rolled, and slammed his sword down in a trail of fire, right where Genji just was. Genji had zoomed backwards at the last second, as reverberations from Adam's strike began to shake the whole building. Adam looked up, suddenly realizing what Genji had been planning. Those ninja stars – there were all in structurally unsound spots of the building. It was about to collapse on top of him.

Genji backed up further as smoke poured out of his body. "Your power has only ever led to death. Now, you will know its taste."

Adam looked at him, mouth curled into a frenzied grimace. He pulled Wilt out, jumped up, and threw it at him. The red sword twirled in a fiery circle in the air, forming a sort of buzzsaw, but Genji was able to pull out the wakizashi in time to block the attack. The buzzsaw reversed direction and went right back to the smoke-covered Adam. Losing no more time, Genji leapt out of a window, landing in the street and rolling, coming to a stop on his feet, where he turned and watched the entire White Fang headquarters collapse on top of Adam.

Then he dove to the ground to avoid a bullet from the wreckage.

A huge chunk of plaster was thrown off the wreck and into the Mistral street. Genji had to roll out of the way the moment he saw it coming right before it shattered on the ground. He rose to his feet and saw a mass of black and red rising out of the wreckage. Suddenly he had to block the hilt of a sword – the red sword Adam had been using this whole time. In an instant, Adam was in front of him, grabbing the hilt in mid-air and delivering a slice that Genji narrowly blocked. Adam swung, and Genji ran away, into the treeline. Adam gave chase right away – he wasn't losing this man to a simple forest.

The two kept running, occasionally meeting, with Genji always barely blocking a blow from Adam. Adam wasn't really sure how long they ran or when they stopped - only that it was in the middle of a street of some nearby town. Adam pulled out Blush and shot Genji's wakizashi. As Genji moved to block the bullet, Adam instantly dashed behind him, grabbed Genji's wrist and threw the cyborg over his shoulder, kicking the wakizashi out of his hands as he fell.

Adam seemed in pain, but his body was undamaged. He sheathed a glowing Wilt. "Now, will you let me kill you, or are you going to fight with a real weapon?"

Genji stood up ."Your mouth will one day lead you into a fight you cannot win."

Adam smiled. "Prove it."

Genji reached behind his back. "You don't know the power of that you have challenged." He whipped out Ryu-Ichimonji, the blade glowing brightly in the night sky. He held it back in a classic kendo pose before suddenly flipping it through his hands dramatically. "Ryū ga waga teki o kurau!"

A green spirit dragon rose up and out of the blade. Adam pulled out Wilt right away to kill it, but it had already turned from him and entered back inside Ryu-Ichimonji. The katana shone brightly, green coming from even the gray portions of the sword.

Without warning, Genji lunged at Adam, sword trailing green the whole way. Adam bent over backwards instantly, the katana only barely missing him. As it passed over his head, it hit one of his bull horns and sliced the tip clean off.

Adam grit his teeth.

Genji sliced forward again as Adam stood up, but Adam quickly blocked the sword with Wilt. The two traded blows, both only bouncing off the other's swords. In only four seconds, they'd clashed over a dozen times in a blur of red and green. Genji attack from above, but Adam blocked the shining Dragonblade attack as his own red sword began to glow. Suddenly, Genji stepped on Adam's foot and spun around, hitting Adam in the side with his leg. This forced Adam to stumble slightly, giving Genji an opportunity to stab forward without being blocked. He hit Adam square in the stomach right before his Dragonblade ran out, the impact sending Adam flying through the street, tearing up the stone and tar as he went, skidding to a painful stop nearly forty feet away.

Adam lay there for a moment, shocked and in pain. With that singular blow, his Aura had been nearly completely depleted. It hadn't suffered too much in the fight before this, but with one hit from the dragon energy…

Adam picked himself up, holding one of his shoulders as it ached.

Well, if one could do that to him, he could only imagine the pain Genji would have when the several Wilt had absorbed were sent back at him.

Two ninja stars came flying at him from behind, but in one move Adam had sliced right through them. "Attacking an enemy from the back? Where's all your honor now?"

"My duty transcends my honor, and my honor transcends you!" a voice shouted from seemingly everywhere. Adam turned around in a circle, scanning his surroundings. There was no sign of him. What there were signs of, however, was the town he was in waking up. Lights were coming on all around him as more and more people heard their exchange. Some were even beginning to come out of their houses.

Perfect.

Adam ran up to a random human who had just stepped onto his porch, grabbed him, and dragged him back onto the street. As the man gasped and gurgled, eyes full of shock and fear, Adam held up Wilt against his throat.

"Come out now, or this filthy human will pay the price of your cowardice!"

There were a dreadful five seconds of absolute silence, the only thing preventing total stillness being people waking up and walking out to see what was happening.

Then Genji dropped in from a tree and stood up before Adam. "Let. Him. Go."

Adam grinned maliciously. "See? This is what happens when you rely on honor. One wrench gets thrown at you and everything falls apart. Now you get to watch what you've caused."

"NO!" Genji swiftly struck ahead of him in a burst of green, but Adam was faster. The tip of Genji's katana poked right over Adam's heart, unable to pierce it, as the hostage fell, throat slit. The crowd that was forming began to scramble, scared, confused, and shocked.

"Don't feel so bad," Adam told Genji, sheathing Wilt. "Killing him was a mercy. He doesn't have to watch me burn this little village to the ground. It will be a message. A message of fear. Of order. Of righteousness."

"How…how can you kill with such ease, such want, and still believe yourself the hero?!"

"After all these creatures did to me, do you really think they deserve anything better? The faunus are the superior race. We're destined to take control of the planet eventually. I'm just speeding up the process."

"Or perhaps after all they did to you, all you want is for them to feel the same way."

Adam's eyes darkened through his mask. "You're clever. But that mouth won't save you from me!"

He lunged ahead, and Genji deflected the slice. The two sparred, Adam's aggressive nature getting the better of Genji's skill at defending himself. Slowly, but surely, Genji was pushed back.

Genji thought quickly. He dashed behind a telephone pole, sliced through its bottom, and picked it up by its fallen base easily. As Adam came swinging, Genji threw the pole with all his might at the rampaging bull.

But Adam simply held out his red blade in front of him and the steel parted. Within a second, there were two perfectly carved halves of a telephone pole without any of it hitting Adam.

But Genji wasn't so dumb as to rely on the pole exclusively.

As the bright light blocked Adam's eyes, Genji struck, diving ahead and slamming into Adam's face with his knees. Adam spun and collapsed, and Genji slashed along his neck and head, his blade simply bouncing off Adam's skin. Adam recovered quickly, throwing off Genji and slashing ahead. Genji blocked the slash and spun his foot under it, tripping Adam over and providing another slashing opportunity.

Adam wouldn't go down without a fight, though. As he fell, he kicked out and got Genji in the leg, too. As Genji attempted to recover, Adam took the chance to shoot him in the leg.

Genji fell back down it pain.

Adam got and stood over him, taking a quick moment to speak before his kill.

"You fought well. But well wasn't good enough. So when your spirit goes to whatever stupid afterlife you want to believe, remember that this village burned and these people died because _you weren't good enough_." He held up Blush for a final headshot as Genji breathed heavily, eyes wide-set.

Then a bullet from out of nowhere struck Adam's forehead and shattered his mask.

Adam bounced back quickly, head throbbing not just in pain, but in anger. He turned – and got a bullet in the back. And then a bullet in the side. Then bullets in his head, legs, arms, chest – everywhere. They all bounced off his aura, but it was depleting way too rapidly. Before long, one of these bullets would actually kill him.

Adam turned in a circle and scanned the area with his one good, piercing blue eye and found out what was happening. Apparantly this village hadn't appreciated him killing one of them and threatening to burn down everything, and had all collectively elected to kill him. At every door, there was at least one person holding at least one gun, all trained on him.

Adam glared.

They all fired.

And Adam blocked.

From every angle at every second at every point, Adam turned and blocked every single bullet fired at him, charging up his Moonslice the whole way. Nobody could get a hit in. Nobody could take him down. And nobody could stop him.

The clicks of an empty barrel were scattered at first, a minor inconvenience before the wielders changed clips and kept firing. But over time, they were more numerous, and before even two full minutes had passed, every barrel was empty, Adam was unharmed…and Wilt was glowing brighter than the moon.

Genji watched helplessly from the ground, pain seeping through his leg, as this all unfolded. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't warn them. He couldn't stop them.

He couldn't even stop him.

But, when the rain of fire ceased, and he saw Adam smirk and hold up his gun at the man who had shot his mask off, none of that mattered.

He could save them.

As the bullet left Blush's barrel, Genji was somehow already moving. He managed to get in front of the man, pull out Ryu-Ichimonji, and bounce the bullet back.

It hit Adam in the forehead, and a red shimmer appeared around him before fading away.

Adam's aura was down.

Genji held out his glowing katana with a renewed sense of determination.

Adam sheathed Wilt. "You can't protect them."

Genji crossed his blade over his chest. "I can _try_."

Adam stared into his eyes and spoke. "No. You can't."

He pulled out Wilt.

The world went red and black.

And the power of a dozen Dragonblade strikes and a hundred bullets came out in the form of a sword beam.

Genji held his ground and activated Dragonblade. He held out the infused blade to catch the red wave of energy.

The two collided.

And the Moonslice tore right through Ryu-Ichimonji.

Genji wasn't even given time to notice his blade shatter before the beam sliced his right arm off and passed behind him, tearing apart several buildings before dispelling.

Genji fell to his knees, in shock, in pain, and bleeding out.

There were gasps, murmers, and outcries from the village.

Adam ignored all of them and strolled up to Genji. On his way, the man Genji had just jumped in front of pulled out his handgun and shot at Adam, who deflected the bullet right into his skull.

When Adam reached Genji, he dropped to one knee.

"This is what honor has brought you. In the end, honor, justice, vengeance, strength, and respect – none of it matters. All that matters is who lives, who dies, and by whose hand. That's what I understood that you didn't. That's why I won."

Genji gasped as more blood poured out from his arm. "You…" he spoke weakly, "You really talk far too much."

His left arm reached out in a surprise move and, in complete shock to Adam, used the broken hilt of Ryu-Ichimonji's remains to slice through his working eye.

Adam fell backwards, screaming in pain, letting go of Wilt as blood splattered out and cheers erupted from the crowd. He heard his sword clatter to the ground, but he didn't know where.

Adam shouted and cried out. The pain – it burned. He couldn't see. He couldn't see. He rolled away from Genji, out into the middle of the street, gasping and crying out. If he waited long enough, his aura's regeneration might heal it – but he was going to die well before that.

Genji pulled himself up, barely able to stand, blood still falling from the stump where his arm was. Then, for his own satisfaction, he put his hands to his head, and lifted off his helmet.

His whole face was scarred, but he saw, with his own eyes, what he had done to this monster.

Far less than it deserved.

He picked up Wilt and walked slowly up to the heap of black and red right as it was beginning to calm down.

"You were right. I wasn't stronger than you. But I was smarter."

The cheers rose in volume.

Adam breathed in and out. He'd done this before. He just needed to focus.

Then, even without eyes, he saw.

He saw Genji standing over him. He saw his own weapon in the ninja's hands. He saw the crowds cheering the cyborg on.

And he saw the wakizashi still lying on the street.

Adam rolled away, and Genji gave chase. They both stopped, and Genji plunged the red blade down. At the same time, Adam grabbed hold of the wakizashi and stabbed up.

Genji stabbed Adam in the stomach.

And Adam stabbed Genji in the throat.

The crowd was silenced instantly as Genji fell. Adam stood up and ripped Wilt out of his stomach and put it back into its sheath. That would leave a nasty scar. But it would heal.

Genji choked on the pavement, blood seeping out everywhere.

Adam stood over him. "Even blind, I see more clearly than you ever did." He pulled Wilt out and stabbed down through Genji's spinal cord. "For honor." He stabbed again, through his kidney. "For justice." And again, in the shoulder. "For respect."

He bent down, grasped Genji by the throat, and lifted him up. Blood poured over his gloves, but he didn't care.

They matched eyes, both scarred, both unmasked, for the first time this fight.

Adam smirked.

"For the faunus."

And he stabbed up into Genji's mouth and through his brain.

 **-KO!-  
**

Adam flung the dead ninja's body up into the air and sliced through it several times on its way down. When it hit the ground, it burst into a hundred, neat pieces. He sheathed Wilt and strolled away, muttering "No mercy for humans."

He paused for a moment, and ripped off a piece of his cloak, then wrapped the black material around his eyes. His eye would regenerate in time – the cut wasn't so deep that he'd be blind forever, but this would do until then.

As he walked through the village, everyone was silent. They were waiting for their execution. How poetic.

Adam ignored them, as he always had. He walked straight out of the village, and out of its lights. He felt the weight on the villagers' shoulders vanish. But they'd forgotten how much fear, anger, shock, sadness, and rage had occurred in that town that night.

As hundreds of creatures with red eyes passed by him, rushing towards the village, he smiled.

 **…  
**

Wow. That ending was seriously grimm.

Genji definitely put up a solid fight, but he was simply outmatched in the places it mattered most. You'd think Genji's superhuman agility would be something Adam couldn't normally compete with, but no, Adam's handled his fair share of agile foes, like Blake, who actually has some very similar fighting styles to Genji, definitely matches him in ninja-like agility, and also commonly double-jumps through usage of her semblance. And Adam's defeated her more than once. It wouldn't be long before his experience and skill was able to pull through when it came to Genji trying to dodge or deflect. Speaking of which, Adam's skill in deflection may actually surpass Genji's. Sure, Genji can deflect plenty of bullets, but he's never performed a feat like Adam's deflection of every bullet from two point-blank chainguns! His ninja stealth would also be fairly worthless. Not only does Genji like to face his opponents fairly, but even if he tried to hide, Adam could find him easily. Hanzo, a normal human, was able to sense him several feet away while he was hiding in the darkness _behind his back_. Meanwhile, Adam has superhuman senses, can see through the dark, and can tell everything that's going on around him while blindfolded. Sure, he gets roughed up by surprise attacks sometimes – when he's actively distracted or fighting another enemy. I'm sure his superhuman senses can probably pick up a swordsman who hides in darkness (which, again, would be useless against a faunus) a lot better than it can pick up a surprise jump attack from a fighter he thought he'd already taken out while he was in the midst of battling another superhuman who had just gained the upper hand.

But truly, none of that is what makes this match. That comes down to their stats. And Adam is just…better than Genji in those areas. Genji was able to take a hit from Diablo, whose giant bell feat puts his strength at around 556 Tons of Force. But this scaling is kind of generous. Not only is that feat technically non-canon, but Genji has never been a guy to take heavy hits, and other characters tougher than him have been taken out by weaker blows than that. In fact, he was one-shotted by Doomfist, who's most impressive feat was punching a crater into a bunch of rock, which would have taken about 610 Tons of Force. However, Adam's Aura Shield puts him significantly above Genji in this regard. Adam has lost his aura rarely, but most notably, after fighting both Blake and Yang for a significant amount of time, falling off a radio tower, taking bullets and superhuman punches, and a motorcycle to the face, his shield only broke after Yang hit him with a devastating punch powered by her semblance that used up all that was left of her aura. This is significant because we know how her semblance works. She takes hits and, after activating it, uses the full power of those hits plus her own against her opponent. So striking someone with a semblance on the verge of a collapsing aura means that she was striking with every possible bit of extra power her semblance could grant her at the time. And, since we know that the Atlesian Paladin mech from Volume 2 can punch with over 1,400 Tons of Force and that, after activating her semblance, she matched and surpassed its strength, that means that her semblance can give her _at least_ that much strength. And her semblance-based blow to Adam was far more powerful than even that, since it actually reached the limits of her aura and she'd trained extensively since her fight with the mech, so her aura was likely even more durable. So Genji breaks after a 610 Ton blow, while Adam's aura broke after a blow that was, AT BARE MINIMUM, 1,400 Tons. It was likely far more. And that was after a long battle with both her and Blake!

"But wait," you say, "what about how he can block punches from Primal Rage Winston, who's as strong or stronger than Doomfist? What about Doomfist being able to level a skyscraper?!" Regarding the first question, I say to you two things: that first, lore matters over gameplay, so if the lore says he can't take a punch from Primal Rage Winston (which it does) but he can as a part of a certain game mechanic, then we're going with the lore. Second, Genji is only ever able to block one punch, and even that sends him flying halfway across a town. That's hardly coming out without a scratch. As for the Doomfist skyscraper thing, I mean, the only time we ever heard that was when a little kid randomly said it while entranced by how cool his gauntlet was. We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back it up. And Primal Rage Winston was able to match his strength, and that version of Winston has NEVER displayed capabilities like that! So it's a random statement by a random citizen with no supporting evidence and its fair share of counter-evidence. Not something I'm going to take into account.

Still, Genji _could_ block punches from normal Winston without much trouble, roughly matching his strength. Winston can crush marble floors that'd have a compression strength of about 20,000 PSI. That's nice. Adam can tear through solid steel without a weapon! That has a tensile strength of over _80,000 PSI_! And Adam had the speed advantage, too. At maximum, Genji could fight at 9,800 MPH. Even that scaling is a little capricious, since not only does it come from a non-canon scene, but the Diablo he's fighting is clearly different from the Diablo we scaled from, and that scaling by itself made a few too many assumptions for me to be truly comfortable with. Honestly, Genji's 7,400 MPH faster-than-the-untrained-eye feat is probably the highest canonical feat he has, though we can probably still scale him to past 9,000 MPH because of that scene with Tracer. Adam's a bit simpler. He once cut up a robot in four completely different wide-set bisections both faster than the eye can track and faster than gravity could enact on the first portion to cause it to move before everything else was sliced up, and then appeared behind it like it was nothing! A highly-trained eye is capable of detecting event happening within 1/220th of a second, so this event must have taken place in less time than that. Measuring out everything in real life, it would have taken a normal fighter approximately 3.75 seconds to perform this feat, indicating a combat speed several hundred times greater than the average fighter. Considering the average combat speed is 15 MPH, we can directly compare these events in order to place Adam's speed at 12,375 MPH – 26% higher than our maximum speed findings for Genji. This is backed up by his being faster than many of the show's characters can detect, and appearing in multiple places to a 9,000 MPH-tracking Yang. And Adam's likely faster still, being able to turn five robots into scrap and appear behind them faster than the eye can track. We just can't measure it, since he's doing the whole "I'm too fast for even the camera to see me move" thing.

"But wait," you say again, "what about Genji being faster than Soldier: 76? That guy outran a grenade explosion, and was able to save a little girl before the explosion reached her! According to an online calculation I found, that puts him at over Mach 90!" To that, I say that there were a lot of questionable things about that scene. The whole point was 76 making a specific decision, not him being able to reach her in time, cinematic timing was clearly abused at various points throughout the short, and neither 76 nor ANY OTHER Overwatch character EVER shows speeds anywhere NEAR this level before or after. And if we're going to be taking extremely questionable and situational outlier speed-feat scaling into account, then we'd have to scale Adam to Mercury's lightning dodging. That feat suffers from the same issues Soldier: 76's feat does – it's not the point of the scene or emphasized, may very well have been a victim of cinematic timing, and no character at any point ever shows anywhere near that level of speed before or after. But if we include one, we have to include the other. And lightning travels at Mach 294. That's a little more than Mach 90.

That speed difference plays a bigger factor than you might think. Now, both are certainly skilled in swordplay, but Adam clearly has studied more forms of swordfighting than Genji, and his abilities stretch beyond what Genji can do. I mean, Genji's a good swordfighter, yeah, but I haven't yet seen him _throw his sword in such a way as to become a buzzsaw then return back to his hand in a manner that is physically impossible_. Adam's style focuses mainly on powerful hits, and with a speed advantage, he's able to land those more often. However, more importantly, it grants him a huge advantage in the deflection department. Both Adam and Genji are able to block and deflect almost any conceivable blow if they can react quickly enough, and that's a big deal, because whenever one blocks or deflects a hit, it charges a move than might be able to one-hit-kill their opponent. Genji's deflection abilities are great enough to block projectiles moving faster than an untrained eye can track, but Adam can block tons of blows from hypersonic fighters like Yang and Blake, and, of course, bullet after bullet after bullet from a chaingun. Add to that his sword's length over the wakizashi Genji uses to block, his superior skill, and his better speed, and that means Moonslice is going to charge up significantly faster than Dragonblade. And while Genji could probably block a regular Moonslice, he can't block the non-physical sword beam version, and Adam's skill, experience against other swordfighters, and superior speed means he'll know when to launch that hit to maximize his chances of landing it. And even if Genji gets his Dragonblade charged up, there's not much stopping Adam from blocking it. It's been blocked before, and Adam has both the experience and speed to do so, especially since the Dragonblade technique is a literal few sword slices without much in the way of range. If Genji can block a Moonslice, Adam can certainly block the Dragonblade. And he can even charge up his Moonslice further with it! And if one of those swords is going to break (which is highly unlikely), it'd be Genji's, since Adam's Moonslice has broken another seemingly impossible-to-damage blade before.

When it all comes down to it, Adam just had the advantage overall. He's stronger, faster, tougher, his skill is likely superior, his deflecting game is well above Genji's, his abilities naturally counter Genji's stealth, the Moonslice is more powerful than the Dragonblade, and he's willing to fight dirty while Genji isn't. And Genji's been emotionally fragile most of his entire life, only finding inner peace recently, and one of Adam's strongest traits is his ability to manipulate others' emotions. There simply weren't enough advantages that Genji had to make this fight turn around.

Genji just couldn't pull through when the High Leader of the White Fang came Adam.

 **The winner is Adam Taurus.**

Next time, on Death Battle…

An armored alchemist with a red stone unleashes a massive blast that coats a huge area and leaves his opponents helpless.

VS.

An armored magician with a giant, eyeballed sword unleashes a massive blast that coats a huge area and captures the souls of all of his opponents.

(Alphonse vs. Nightmare)

(Powerful Alchemist Whose Soul is in his Armor vs. Powerful Magician Whose Soul is in his Sword)

 **Hey everyone! This was a super fun one to write – I haven't written a battle between characters this simple since Dust vs. Kirito. Not that figuring this out was simple, oh, no! Tons of research and tons of debating went on here. In fact, it was during research for this that I found out that the manga has officially replaced the canonicity of the trailers and Volume 1, so if you're wondering where a certain feat came from (e.g. the slicing the guy four times and the giant spider robot being sliced in half and NOT being turned to rose petals) it's probably from there. The manga is actually really good. Surprising.**

 **Oh, and I've decided that when I tease a matchup and later reveal it, I'll tell you what it was teased as, so you don't get confused and are forever waiting for a fight that will never happen. That's what the whole "Alchemist Whose Soul is in his Armor vs. Magician Soul Sword Blah Blah" was about right there. So yeah.**

 **Any other announcements? Aside from the fact that this season's finale is going to be super special, no, not really. Have fun, ask questions, request matchups, and I'll see you next time for Alphonse vs. Nightmare! Bye!**


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